Maximum Ride, HIVE Queen
by The Winged Pyro That Drowned
Summary: Max escaped the School, but she was the only one. The first thing she did when she was free? She went on a crime spree of course! Then she managed to grab the attention of H.I.V.E. and Max gets placed in the same group as Otto and the gang: the Alphas. Trouble and hilarity ensue, especially when Otto takes a liking to the new recruit… Some OOC but its all in-character ;)
1. Chapter 1

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch1

**Well, I started writing this a long time ago... somewhere early 2012, like literally just after reading Aftershock. So this is a really old piece, but somewhere in the middle of chapter 3 I got my style sorted out. More of an explanation over there ;) Hope you guys like this enough to read it all! ~Pyro**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride, or H.I.V.E. in any way, shape, or form other than copies borrowed from the library while I wait for the book store to restock. Claimer: ALL MY STUFF IS MINE! Plus whatever I steal... what? Why are you looking at me like that? This is a school of _villainous education_! On with the story! Slight warnings of cheesyness and possible OOC. Not too bad though... **

_There's a little slight AU here. This is somewhere before Aftershock, and before that nasty security chief was hired, Raven got a little less serious after her birthday party..._

_**Woo! I'ma line break!**_

_Excuses Excuses,_

-.-.-.-

Military Camp, somewhere in the USA

Max waited patiently in line with the other school kids waiting to tour the camp. This was going to be her best operation yet! She had crafted some false ID and hacked the school network so it seemed like she was a student. Max had been careful, putting on a wig and makeup so no recognition system, human or otherwise, would know that she was the infamous "Arch-Angel"; master thief, hacker, and general law breaker. She was only seen with wings once, on her first heist, and that was where the name came from. After that she had tried to keep her wings hidden, resorting to stealing more cars than normal.

Her current alias was Anna-lee Serri, a girl with a foreign origins but born in the USA. The school had been in the news because it was going to tour a few Military bases. So far they had visited a navy base, where Max had stolen a pair of night-vision goggles, an air base, where Max had stolen the keys to an F-22 jet, and now a land base where she was planning to steal a tank.

The tour started, being led by a grisly looking grey haired General. Most of the class played First Person Shooter games like Crysis, Halo, and Call of Duty, and were very interested in most of it. Max smiled. _If only they knew, _she thought, looking towards the vehicle hanger. But somebody did know…

-.-.-.-

H.I.V.E.

Nero stared at the screen in front of him, his mouth hanging open. Finally he tore his gaze away and looked at Raven.

"What the hell is going on? She's a master criminal; why hasn't she done anything yet? She hasn't done anything for almost a month now," he said, amazed and irritated. Raven looked at the girl on screen.

"I'm not sure… she's almost finished touring the army bases and the only thing we've seen her steal has been night vision goggles. She looks like Alpha stream material and it looks like she's the same age as Otto. What do you suggest we do, Max?" Raven knew he would love a new student like this. Whenever she stole something, she made it look ridiculously easy or did it with style. And it was almost always public.

"Recruit her, obviously," Nero snorted. "But I still want to know what she's planning to do in there," he said, pointing to the base. Raven smiled and shook her head.

"Something big I'll bet,"

"Oh, really," Nero said sarcastically, pulling out his wallet. "50 bucks says your wrong!"

-.-.-.-

Military Base

Max wandered about, looking at all the plans and training sheets stapled to the walls. She wasn't paying attention, but it sure looked like it. Getting deliberately lost meant she had a chance to search the camp with a decent excuse. Soon she couldn't hear the group. _Perfect, _she thought. Max was a great actor: it came with the job. She put on her "Innocent-But-Kinda-Lost" face and walked quickly towards the vehicle hanger.

"Excuse me, miss, are you lost?" a soldier stopped her as soon as she was out the door.

"Umm, kind of… I think the tour group went over to look at the AA jeeps without me," she said with a nervous laugh, as though it was true.

The soldier smiled and offered his arm. "Need an escort?"

"Hmmm, ok." Max hesitantly accepted. This was not part of her plan. She was supposed to get there, scout for guards, find the keys and drive off.

As they walked, arm in arm, Max was suddenly glad the soldier had noticed her. It simply looked like she was his girlfriend instead of the lost girl. Most of the army wasn't kind to trespassers. The pair got to the hanger without interruption. As soon as they were inside Max suddenly got up and gave the soldier a kiss. He responded instantly, kissing her back.

"Thanks for the help, big guy," she said and ran off, leaving soldier stunned and speechless. _If only they used that tactic in close quarters fighting, _she laughed and raced towards the coat room. Max must have been having an off day because there as soon as she found the keys (in someone's jacket pocket) there was another young soldier. _They must be recruiting out of high school these days…_

"What are you doing here?" he said accusingly. Max hid the keys in her own back pocket and slowly walked towards the soldier, smiling.

"Oh, nothing much…" she gave him a kiss. If it weren't for her strawberry lipstick, the guy would have taken her away. As it was, he tried to get another kiss.

"No more for you, greedy," she said and gave him an uppercut to the chin. He was unconscious before he hit the floor. Max once again went looking for a tank.

-.-.-.-

H.I.V.E.

"Maybe we shouldn't put her with Otto and the others," Raven said, noting how the girl was keeping the soldiers from asking questions.

"Why not? She's certainly leader material, and being with Otto and his friends is one sure-fire way to get in trouble around here. See how she stole the queens' favourite pillow last month?" Nero referred to another heist.

The girl had pretty much walked into the place and strolled through looking for the queen's bedroom. It was one of those times where she made it look ridiculously easy. Anyone that tried to stop her got beaten up. She even went through the royal jewellery cabinet, trying on earrings and necklaces, admiring herself in the mirror. She stole some of that too. She'd done what was considered a publicity stunt in the criminal world by leaving the security cameras running. Then she finally found the bedroom, and took the pillow.

The police had the building surrounded and news choppers had been everywhere. There were even a couple of snipers set up! The girl had leaned out the window and waved at the people, pretending to be queen. She took a bow just as a sniper took a shot. It missed but the girl shut the window and stared at the gunman, hands on hips. Then she pulled the finger at him and went into the halls.

Her getaway was a mystery, even for Raven. In the stand-off, which lasted a couple hours because the girl had been throwing frozen turkeys out the windows at police, a thick fog had descended. The helicopters had landed and police stormed the building, but the girl was never found. She left a note on the bed:

_Dear queen,_

_Thanks for the pillow and jewellery. It's all very lovely, but the food's horrible. Where the hell do you hide the chocolate?! _

_Sincerely,_

_The little girl down the lane, A.K.A. The Arch-Angel_

Nero and Raven remembered it, with different views.

"We shouldn't put her with Otto, Laura, Shelby and Wing. She seems to be a little too flirtatious, and Laura _is_ trying to get Otto's attention. They're little lovebirds in the making. The other two are already in love. This would be like chucking a grenade in the middle of a rose bridge." Raven finished her speech and looked at Nero expectantly. He smiled and nodded.

"Since when have you been such a poet?" he asked.

"Nevermind" she muttered.

"But will it be a Frag grenade, or a Flashbang?" he grinned evilly. Raven turned to the screen and her eyes went wide.

"Definitely Frag. And you owe me 50 bucks."

-.-.-.-

Military Base

CRASH! Max smashed down the wall of the hanger. It was hard for her to drive, take off a wig and get rid of her makeup all at the same time. She checked the GPS: the air base she had visited yesterday was only a few miles away, and there was a large town between them. Max got the queens pillow out from her bag and put in on the seat. _At least it's more comfortable_, she thought while scaring her former classmates. She actually stopped the tank in front of them and opened the hatch. She looked at all the shocked and amazed faces and laughed.

"You guys might be interested to know that these things smell like old socks," Max said. No reply from anyone. Not even the General dude. "Well, laters!" she closed the hatch and started driving again. She got out onto the main road and hit the high gear. This thing could do 80 M/H! Max turned the radio (she couldn't believe it had one) and cranked up AC/DC: Highway to Hell. "I'm on a hiiigghhwaaayyy to hell! Yea," she sang, unaware that the base was listening in.

-/-/-/-

The General listened to the girl singing along to AC/DC and was absolutely speechless. The teacher however was not. "What's going on…?"

-/-/-/-

Max continued to run over cars and sing badly. She missed the air base and reversed into it. The tank was almost out of gas but it didn't really matter, she was on the air strip. She parked next to an F-22 and pointed the gun at the fuel storage area. Max was smiling as she hopped out of the tank climbed the ladder up to the F-22. Once seated and geared up, she put the keys in and charged down the runway.

-.-.-.-

H.I.V.E.

Ravens eyes could not have been more open. Her mouth was hanging open. She was shocked beyond words.

"Max, she's piloting an F-22… after stealing a tank," ok, so she did have words.

"You may want to take some of the guys and go get her before she nukes somebody." Nero replied, mouth also hanging open. It had been a truly shocking thing to watch. And it was live, so nobody knew what was about to happen.

"Raven, go and grab her, quick!" Nero almost shouted at her. "I'm going to see Otto, he needs to see this," he said as he got up and walked out of the office. Raven was still staring at the screen. "Huh? Oh, right. Go get the girl," she walked off in a daze.

-/-/-/-

Otto was looking forward to the new school year. New recruits meant more chances to show off. He was walking to the library when he was run over by Raven. They both fell down in an awkward heap. It took a moment but Otto spoke first.

"Umm, Raven, could you please get off me?"

She snapped out of her daze and looked around. "Sorry, Otto, I wasn't really paying attention. And Dr Nero would like to see you," she apologized. Otto was confused.

"Why didn't he just use the Blackbox?" he said, referring to the small black Smartphone like device everyone at H.I.V.E. had.

"HIVEMind is busy running tests on a copy of the internet. Something about it being self aware and whether it's going to try killing off the humans or something. So far Google tried to corrupt his mainframe and now he has to put all of his attention into it. Just head to Nero's office, ok?" Raven explained quickly.

"So where are you going? Is there any chance of me helping?" he asked. Raven smiled.

"If you can safely land an F-22 without killing the pilot, who happens to be a devil-may-care-but-I-certainly-don't master criminal who is more than likely to try shooting us down as soon as she sees us, then yes, you might be able to help. But Nero wants to see you," but Otto wasn't so easily put off.

"Can the rest of the gang come too?" he asked.

"No."

-.-.-.-

Somewhere in the Skies

Max was eating her sandwich: at the speed of sound. The F-22 was on auto-pilot and Max was having some lunch. She had a feeling it might be the last chance she would get to eat it. She looked at the world map below her (she was using it as a table cloth) and tapped a small island in the pacific. _I'll bury some treasure or make that my evil HQ, _she thought. So Max directed the auto-pilot to fly her there. She thought about a few of her pervious crimes while she packed her stuff into her backpack.

The radar picked up something and beeped. _I thought it said this island was uninhabited… must be a tourist jet, _she guessed. She looked out the window, but there was nothing but clear sky and an ugly plume of smoke and ash coming from the volcano…

-.-.-.-

H.I.V.E.

"Ma'am, the target appears to have changed course. It's now heading towards us, and is within visible distance of the island. Suggestions?" the co-pilot gave his tactical summary with a worried frown. Raven was shocked, again. This really needed to stop soon; it was bad for her image. Nobody was supposed to know about the island and H.I.V.E. The Shroud drop-ship rose out of the crater.

"How the hell did she get here so fast? She was a couple of hours away last time I checked," she said, "she's at least half an hour ahead of schedule!"

"The target appears to have done the trip with afterburners over the red line. Scans show that the target is fully mission capable and has an assortment of missiles and an experimental flak cannon. We could take it out or grab it for ourselves. Briefing told us that while the target has no flight experience, it won't bother with risk assessment of moves. A "devil-may-care" attitude, if you will," said the co-pilot, still frowning. "An air mounted flak cannon would be useful." He added. Otto looked worried.

"Well, if you don't mind losing the flak cannon, I can slow down the target and kick the ejector seat. It should make it a lot easier to grab her if she's not in control of the plane," he said. The co-pilot didn't want to give up the flak cannon though.

"Could you land the jet once you've launched the ejector seat?" he asked.

"I'll see what I can do. Raven, you-"

"I know what I need to do. Remember who's in charge of this field trip," she warned.

"Sorry. Who is this girl anyway?" he asked. Raven could see he was interested, but not romantically. But she might as well have a laugh.

"Don't tell me you've dumped Laura already!" she said with mock amazement. Otto blushed and turned away. Raven laughed and he glared daggers at her. Then he accessed the Shrouds systems and tugged at her seatbelt, excessively. Raven gagged and put up her hands in surrender.

"Ok, sorry! You wouldn't know her anyway. The only name we know her by is "Arch-Angel". Nero thinks she would fit on perfectly with your group; maybe even seek it out. She's a bit of a trouble magnet at times." Smiling, she undid the safety harness. The co-pilot watched this with little interest.

"The target is almost within firing range. Our weapons are set to disable," he reported. Then he turned back and grinned. "You know, kid, I don't think you get bonus points for flirting with the teachers…"

-.-.-.-

Over the Ocean

Max put her bag in her lap and turned off the auto-pilot. The radar was still beeping at her. She sighed and grabbed the controls, trying to turn to the left. The plane wouldn't respond and started to slow down.

"What the hell?" she said, irritated instead of fearful as some pilots might have been. Max grabbed her bag and searched for the ejector seat lever, almost pulling it before the plane did it instead. The cockpit lid popped off and the seat shot into the air. She tried to get the safety harness undone so she could fly away, but she saw some kind of advanced VTOL or something come out of the cloud, heading straight for her! Where was the chute handle? Max swore under her breath.

"I knew I should have gone to the School! I could have destroyed them," she muttered angrily. The parachute opened just before she started falling. The strange ship turned around and some kind of loading ramp opened towards her. She put her arms around the bag, hugging it tightly. Her life's savings and _everything_ she owned was in that bag! She could see a really pale kid and a woman in the ship, and the lady was pointing some kind of gun at her… it looked like a Taser but-

-.-.-.-

Shroud Drop-ship

The co-pilot was sitting unconscious in his seat; Raven had dragged him out of his seat, kicked him in the nuts, and then strangled him till he was blue and knocked him out. She had dumped him back in the seat and then told the pilot to spin around so she could get the target with a Sleeper.

"Otto, open her chute!" Raven yelled at the boy, the wind whipping her hair, which had grown to about shoulder length. He nodded and closed his eyes. The girls chute opened and she looked at them. Raven could see how protective she was with that bag: it probably had everything she owned in it. She aimed the Sleeper and fired. When the girl's head dropped, Raven knew that it had worked. She fired her Grappler at the seat and dragged it in. As soon as it was close enough, she pulled out one of her twin glowing katana and sliced at the parachutes ropes. The ejector seat, girl and all, crashed to the deck with a clang, startling Otto.

"That was quick," he commented. "Hey, the F-22 can't land vertically, what should I do with it?" he yelled. Raven closed the ramp and turned to the pilot.

"Have we got a carrier sub near here?" she asked.

"No, but we can get one here in half an hour," he suggested. Raven shook her head.

"A jet circling the island for that long will draw too much attention. Sorry Otto, but you'll need to crash it," she said it without a hint of regret. The co-pilot was still in his seat, doing a fantastic vegetable impression. Otto nodded and a splash was heard; the jet was gone. The girl moaned and started to wake up.

"What- where am I?" she said groggily. Raven checked the power settings and the battery on her Sleeper.

"That charge should have been enough to knock out an adult for over six hours," she muttered, and decided to get the gun checked next time she saw Professor Pike. The girl tried to get up again. She managed to get out of the harnesses this time. She looked at Otto with a dreamy look on her face.

"Who are you?" she asked. Otto thought she was extremely pretty.

"My name is Otto Malpense, what's yours?"

"Max," she said sleepily. "Maximum Ride." The girl fell down in one of the few seats, still clutching her bag, and fell asleep. Raven watched this encounter silently.

"That went well," she said. She turned to the pilot and told him to get them back into the school. "Otto, Dr Nero still wants to see you and I don't think you can use me as an excuse this time." He grinned.

"Can I use this lovely lady as an excuse instead then?" he asked. Raven thought for a moment, and decided to do what was best.

"You can if you want, but you missed your science class too. Can you use the same excuse with your lovely Laura?" she teased. Otto went pale.


	2. Chapter 2

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch2

_It's a Cat and Mouse Relationship,_

-.-.-.-

Nero's Office

Otto was in Nero's office, and he was in a lot of trouble. Nero and HIVEMind had needed his help in taking down the self-aware internet. Unfortunately, while they did manage to take it out, it had destroyed a few of the schools security protocols.

HIVEMind was busy rebuilding them and had set up a Texting based network for the Blackboxes in the mean time. Now they were discussing the girl, Maximum Ride. She was still asleep in the Shroud. Nero had a few problems too.

"It would be best to bring her in at the same time as the other students, but she's almost a week early! What am I going to do?" he complained, rubbing his forehead in frustration.

"We could just keep her in the Alpha's hall," Otto suggested with a shrug. "She knows me, so it might make her feel better if there was someone she knew with her. We could share a room," he offered. Nero looked at him.

"So who's going to bunk with Wing then?" he asked.

"I'm sure Shelby would leap at the chance," Otto replied, a plan forming in his head. Nero however said one thing that would destroy those plans.

"And what about Laura, who will _she _bunk with, hmm?" Nero accused at him. Then his Blackbox beeped at him. He was more than surprised, jumping about a foot in the air. "It doesn't usually do that," Nero muttered. He read the message before looking back at an expectant Otto. "HIVEMind says he can organize a few three-people rooms and class groupings. Since you and Wing blew up part of the accommodation block, we'll be more compressed than usual," he explained. Otto smiled.

"Perfect,"

-.-.-.-

The Shroud

Max woke, wondering where she was before she remembered the F-22 incident. She looked around. The loading ramp was open, and she could see a huge open building, possibly another hanger, outside.

"Finally awake? About time," said a voice. Her head whipped around to face the speaker. It was that lady who shot her! Max stared at her. The other woman stared back. This continued for a while before one of them blinked.

"Hah! I win!" Max yelled and raced out into the hanger with her backpack on. "Whoa, this place is huge… Now how do I get out of here?" she muttered. She raced down to what looked like a door and tried to get in. There was a palm scanning device. Amazingly, they were some of the easiest systems to bypass. Max punched the screen as hard as possible, and it crunched. The door opened and she ran through.

An alarm started blaring loudly in the halls. Then it stopped, doors opened, and kids started to fill the corridors. _Not good! _ Max thought as she stopped and looked for a way out. There was none. She looked closely at the kids. They were all wearing colour-themed uniforms and carrying book bags. She spotted a side corridor and slipped out of sight. Leaning against the wall she slid to the ground. _I've managed to keep away from the School for almost 7 years now, _the 16 year old bird-kid thought, _just to be captured by the school. _It was a depressing yet funny at the same time. Max just sighed and rubbed her forehead.

"What am I going to do now?" she muttered.

-.-.-.-

The Science classroom

Professor Pike was looking through a few of the tasks he'd set for Otto and Laura. It wasn't as good as it normally was. He'd seen Otto staring off into the wall a few times during class and he knew him well enough to know he wasn't messing around with the systems.

"He must be having girl troubles," he mused. Smiling, Pike left the classroom and went to get some lunch. He swung open the door and something fell backwards and pushed him over, hitting a couple of desks. He looked to see what it was, fearing the worst (although he had no idea what the worst would be. Probably a stack of primed C4 or something), but seeing nothing. Pike got up slowly, looking for anything that was out of place. Then he looked up on a hunch, but there was nothing there. The Professor slowly walked out and shut the door behind him. He waited a minute. Then another before pressing his ear to the door and listening. He thought he could hear some light footsteps… Suddenly the door opened and someone screamed. Pike started to fall over again but was roughly smashed in the head by the intruder slamming the door on him. Ouch.

-.-.-.-

In the classroom

Max continued to open and slam the door against the old man with the frizzy Einstein hairdo. CRUNCH, went the mad scientists head. He fell backwards and Max slammed the door one last time. Looking around the room, she found an odd looking circuit drawing. She made a copy of it and added a few things based on the legend poster on the wall. Max continued to edit the drawing and never noticed the old man trying to sneak back in. He pulled out a phone and was sending a text when he noticed what she was doing. He crept up behind her and looked over her shoulder. She sneezed and the man jumped back, hitting another desk and falling behind it. Max turned and looked at the offending desk. She waited for a moment, staring at the desk before returning to the drawings.

-.-.-.-

Cowering behind an offensive desk

Professor Pike quickly tried to text Raven.

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Pike

_Do u happn 2 b mssing a kid?_

He got a reply immediately.

-/-/-/-

To: Pike

From: Raven

_Maybe…_

Pike stared at the text, his jaw hanging. He sent her another.

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Pike

_WTF? Shes right here drawing up some kind of doomsday device! Get here now!_

He sent it away, not getting a response.

"Whatcha doin'?" someone above him asked in an oh-so-innocent voice. Pike looked up to see the girl looking down on him.

"Playing Tetris?" he tried. The girl scowled and hit him on the head.

-.-.-.-

Above a very offensive desk

Max scowled and hit the guy on the head. He slumped down and Max grabbed the phone, checking through everything she could. The Einstein wanna-be must be Pike. That lady who shot her must be Raven, she decided. And she was coming here! Max backed away and swivelled around to walk out the door, and ran into Otto: lips first.

-.-.-.-

The Shroud

Raven had fallen asleep after watching the girl for a while and blinking. Her Blackbox vibrated and she woke up.

"Guh-what?" she looked around. Max was gone! Raven checked her messages and found one from Dr Nero, one from Professor Pike, and three from Ms Leon.

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Dr Nero

_otto is gonna bunk with max+laura. good idea?_

Raven didn't think so.

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Ms Leon

_Purr. Meow. _

What the heck? Her translator collar must have broken or something.

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Ms Leon

_Sorry, the translator broke._

Raven almost laughed. She could predict the future!

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Ms Leon

_Can we play cat and mouse in the virtual training area later?_

Raven shuddered. Last time she played that with Ms Leon, she'd been eaten.

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Pike

_Do u happn 2 b mssing a kid?_

Ravens eyes went wide, again. _So that's where she went, _she thought. She typed in a reply immediately.

-/-/-/-

To: Pike

From: Raven

_Maybe…_

-/-/-/-

Raven ran in the direction of Pikes classroom. She felt the Blackbox get a reply, but she saw the state of the palm scanner and just ran faster. Turns out you can open the doors by smashing the scanners with unnecessarily large amounts of force.

-.-.-.-

Just outside the science classroom

Otto walked into the room. Or he tried to; he got a quick kiss from that girl, Max, instead. They froze; lips together, taking a moment to realize what was happening before quickly pulling away.

"Oh, wow, umm, hi," Max said, a little flustered, her face burning red. She looked away. Otto was turning red too, but he knew this was the best chance he was ever going to get.

"Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?" he asked, cupping her chin in his hand and bringing her in for another kiss. Max was just as eager. There was something different about him, she thought, something that attracted her to him like metal to a magnet. She pulled him into the classroom and they fell over something. Max giggled and pulled Otto closer.

"Don't ever leave me," she whispered quietly in his ear. Otto smiled warmly and hugged her back.

"I wouldn't think of it," he assured her. They lay there on the floor, just enjoying it. Max started humming. No particular tune, just humming quietly. There was a crash as door opened and Raven fell over the limp body of Professor Pike. Max shot up and looked at Raven. Her hair was a mess, like bed hair. Otto got up and put a hand around Max's waist before he noticed Raven, who was standing there, shocked beyond comprehension. Her jaw was hanging open again. Not the best day she's ever had. You could have cut the tension with a knife. But Otto used his voice.

"So… how-" he started, but Raven screeched and screamed.

"YOU SLEPT WITH HER?!" She yelled, very loudly. Max grinned and Otto blushed.

"Now there's an idea," Max whispered in his ear. She looked at Otto. "I don't suppose I could bunk with you?"

-.-.-.-

His Office

Nero looked at his Blackbox and shook his head.

-/-/-/-

To: Nero

From: Raven

_No, it is most definitely not a good idea to put Otto, Laura and Max in the same room, at any time. Much less overnight…_

-/-/-/-

There was a picture attachment. There was Max, arms around Otto's neck and kissing his cheek. He was staring at Raven, his face a mask of shocked humiliation. Then Nero noticed they both seemed to have bed hair. He rubbed his forehead and sighed.

"Why is it always the new girls and the albinos?"


	3. Chapter 3

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch3

**Just gotta say that I got sorta stuck on this story somewhere in the middle and left it alone for a few months. If you notice any distinct change in writing style, I can only hope it is for the better. ~Pyro**

_Girl Troubles…_

-.-.-.-

_One week later_

Otto gave Laura a quick squeeze and told her everything would be fine. Unfortunately for the young romantic, his heart still ached for Max, the mysterious girl from the F-22. Shelby was still pestering Otto about something, but he wasn't really listening. Then she said something about an Arch-Angel.

"Wait, what was that about an archangel?" he asked. Shelby stared at him with mock shock all over her face.

"Oh, nothing, just that she's suddenly died in an aircraft crash," she mourned. Wing groaned and Laura facepalmed.

"Why weren't you listening?" Wing grieved and shook his small albino friend by the shoulders. "Now we have to go through it all over again!" Otto laughed and gave Wing a shove.

"Have you been practicing emotion again?"

Wing smiled the all-too-obviously-a-fake politicians smile and said, "Why, yes, I have been."

Shelby just got a bit fanatical about outside news. She had been looking through news articles after Laura had managed to smuggle an internet connection and had stumbled upon a story about the Arch-Angel, a new criminal with wings. There was one photo: Max with her wings out, standing in front of a jewellery box at a museum. She was looking at the cameraman in surprise, as though she had been snuck up on. Shelby had since been her stalker. If there was anything you wanted to know, or even not know, Shelby would probably tell you anyway.

"I was just trying to tell you about the Arch-Angel. Remember how I was the Wraith? I specialized in secretly grabbing the high valued stuff and keeping it. This girl goes for different things, the queen's fave pillow, the Secretary of Defence's laptop, and CIA operatives cell phones; she even stole one of Raven's Katana once!" Shelby was absolutely fanatical. Otto was dumbstruck. He had a crush on an angel, but was cheating on a hacker… but there was only one way to be sure.

"How did she manage to get one of Raven's katana and get on the news? I mean, how did you know it was Raven's?" This wasn't the way, but he was interested. Shelby almost kissed him, she was just _that _happy she had a chance to tell someone all about it.

"Ok, when Wing and Raven were in Rio and had that car chase and drove through a helicopter, Arch-Angel was there."

"Really? Why?" Otto asked her.

"She was painting a moustache on that giant statue of Jesus." Shelby explained.

"Huh... that's… odd." Otto frowned. Shelby tried talking again but the class bell interrupted her.

"Oh, that stupid alarm!" She exclaimed. "Every year it's the same; do this, talk about that, leave class halfway through, impress the new students…" she muttered. Otto hid a grin, knowing that it wouldn't be long before she met Max for herself. But he was kind of dreading it at the same time. What if she told about their hot-and-heavy make out session in the science lab?

-.-.-.-

Sick bay

Max slept on. Raven watched over her. Nero was not around. The doctors were out doing something else. The security cameras were disabled.

The two girls were together again.

"It's certainly been a while, Max," she whispered. Max was strapped to the bed and had been in an induced coma for the last week. Raven bent over her and stroked the sleeping girl's hair lovingly.

"Soon," she whispered, "Soon,"

-.-.-.-

Class

It was science class.

"Now remember kids, always wear your seatbelt when sitting in an ejector seat; unless you're in a helicopter." Professor Pike laughed with the class. All but Otto were paying attention. He was staring at a wall. "Oh and about the new students," that got his attention.

"Since this is science, I want you to talk about the most technical stuff you can: Quantum Power Inducing Solenoid Circuit Quadratics Equations, if you can."

One of the kids decided to be a smart-ass. "L0L Wut?"

Pike was used to dealing with this.

"Derp." He replied and the class had at least one person gasping for breath they laughed so hard. The next door class, which happened to be Dr Nero teaching blackmailing, knocked on the wall.

"Meh, he'll get over it eventually." Pike muttered.

The alarm sounded and the students piled into the halls. Pike pulled the distracted albino aside for a private word. Otto had no idea what it was about.

"Otto, your grades are falling. Not by much, but they are falling." Pike warned him. "You've been staring at that same spot on the wall for the past week. What I'd like to know is what's going on up in that head of yours." Otto blushed.

"Oh, uhhmm… it's nothing to worry about." He said, "Just girl troubles."

-.-.-.-

A few hours later, in the Alphas accommodation block

Otto looked around for his friends, not seeing them anywhere. Max wasn't there either. He didn't dare ask HIVEMind about it, in case the A.I. suspected something. HIVEMind was a bit supportive of his relationship with Laura; probably because she was a computer coding expert.

Otto headed towards the new room he was assigned. He still didn't know who he was bunking with. He ran the possibilities through his head.

-/-/-/-

Otto + Wing + Max = Otto and Max being alone together whenever Wing wants alone time with Shelby… Otto felt himself almost looking forward to this scenario.

-/-/-/-

Otto + Wing + Laura = Otto and Laura being alone together whenever Wing wants alone time with Shelby… Otto was rather puzzled as to why he didn't actually like this situation. He… he had no idea what it was about Max, but…

-/-/-/-

Otto + Max + Laura = Otto getting into a lot of trouble… possibly with both girls…

-/-/-/-

Otto + Wing + Shelby = Otto would probably have to leave the room quite often, which would be a pain.

-/-/-/-

And the last, possibly most dreaded scenario;

Otto + Max + Shelby…

He didn't even want to contemplate it. Shelby would keep Max up all night, every night, asking her everything she could. It would keep Otto awake. And then there was the little problem of Shelby being the Alpha Gossip Centre; the second he or Max did something, _absolutely everyone _would know about it.

Otto almost trembled as he took out his Blackbox.

-/-/-/-

To: HIVEMind

From: Otto Malpense

_Who are my room mates?_

-/-/-/-

To: Otto Malpense

From: HIVEMind

_Miss Trinity and Miss Ride. Do you wish to request new room mates? Franz may require a shift._

-/-/-/-

To: HIVEMind

From: Otto Malpense

_No swap around needed, thank you for the information._

-/-/-/-

Oh, dear god, no. It was him, Max, and _Shelby._

Then again, it would be nice to get away from Wing's snoring for once. Maybe he'd give it a go.

This could only end badly.


	4. Chapter 4

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch4

_Hidden Secrets and Troubled Pasts,_

-.-.-.-

Bunk room

Max moaned and clutched her head. She was lying in bed with a terrible headache. She'd been in an induced coma before, back at the School. The cold wet washcloth spread over her face felt fantastic. A mattress lay on a bedset above her, meaning it must have been a bunk room.

"Uh, hello?" a voice asked tentatively, wondering if there was actually anyone in here.

"Hey," Max croaked weakly. Thankfully she still had her own clothes on, although they were starting to smell and she suspected she'd be forced into wearing one of those coloured suit things. But she had no idea where all her stuff was.

"Oh, how're you feeling? You look like someone shot you with a Sleeper," the voice said. It sounded female, but in her current state, Max wasn't sure.

She peeped out from under the cloth. "Sleeper?" she asked.

"Like a tranq taser,"

Yep, definitely female.

"Ah."

"Anyway, they leave you with a hideous headache. Did you try to escape already?"

"No, I was in an induced coma. At least I'm pretty sure that was what it was." Max said, her eyes pounding inside her skull.

"What did they have you in that for?" the other girl asked, curious.

"Something about me being early… I might have to- hey, do you know any albino named Otto?"

"Yep. He's our other room-mate. I'm Shelby," she didn't offer a handshake; she was smart enough to know Max wouldn't be able to accept it anyway.

"Max," Max introduced herself.

"OK, Max, you must be new here… if you have any questions on anything, feel free to ask." Shelby smiled welcomingly.

"Thanks. Uh, what is this place?" Max flipped the cloth and pushed some hair out of her eyes.

"Welcome to H.I.V.E., the Higher Institute of Villainous Education!"

Max raised an eyebrow and peeked out again. "Does this have anything to do with that tank I stole?"

-.-.-.-

To: Otto Malpense

From: Shelby Trinity

_You are not going to believe this._

Otto committed mental suicide. Twice. Shelby had beaten him to her already.

-/-/-/-

To: Otto Malpense

From: Shelby Trinity

_Tanks smell like old socks._

Otto committed mental suicide again.

He sighed and walked towards their bunk room, dreading every moment. When he got there, Otto found Shelby playing around on the internet on one of the three computers set up in their room. Max was lying in bed asleep with a washcloth over her face.

"Hey," Otto greeted Shelby quietly. "What's that?" he asked, pointing at the screen.

"Hey. I'm just looking to see if Arch Angel survived that crash somehow." Shelby whispered. "From the looks of it, her new jet went down right next to a small tropical island volcano somewhere in the pacific."

"And?"

"The jet didn't explode! She might be running around somewhere on the island! Isn't this great?" she squealed, causing Max to jolt out of sleep.

Max gasped and put a hand over her heart, looking like she'd just woken from a horrible nightmare. Soon her hyperventilating slowed down, and she sat up. She saw Otto the moment the washcloth peeled itself off of her sweat-soaked brow. "Oh, hey Otto!" Max said, getting up and smiling broadly. "Where have you been?!" she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "You said you'd never leave me," she whispered in his ear, hurt.

Otto clasped his hands together behind her waist and whispered back, "And I won't,"

"Whoa," Shelby woahed. "Uhh, I'm not allowed to tell Laura anything about this am I?' she asked.

Otto then remembered who was in the room him and Max, and flushed red. He hid his face in her hair, looking away.

Max didn't mind at all. Whoever Laura was, she could just leave off. Otto belonged to Max now. He was hers and hers alone. "Whazat?" she pointed at the computer screen, breaking away from Otto.

"Huh? Oh, just stuff about a master criminal called the Arch-Angel-" Shelby said before she was interrupted by her heroine.

"I'm on the net? Cool."

Otto committed mental suicide again. And facepalmed. Shelby looked at Max in startled amazement for about two seconds. Then she fainted. Max bent over to look at the screen in more detail.

"Well, well, well; it looks like we've got some catching up to do," she flashed a very suspicious smile at Otto who just noticed that Max had noticed the date on the news article… it was about a week ago.

"Uhh…" Otto backed away a little, or tried to: he tripped on something and fell down backwards on the bed. Max giggled and crawled in on top of him, and immediately they were lost in nowhere with each other. There was nothing else to their world, but there didn't need to be.

-.-.-.-

In Wing and Laura's bunk room

"Why couldn't they put you and Shelby together?!" Laura seethed, wrapping her pillow around her head, trying to block out the chainsaw roaring across the room.

"Sorry, I didn't quite catch that!" Wing yelled back. Laura got up and grabbed his head.

"TURN THE BLOODY THING OFF!" she thoroughly screamed in his ear.

"Hey, I was told this is my new room, so, uhh, hi!" one of the new Alphas was standing by the door, waving hello. "Is this a bad time?" he asked, raising an eyebrow and the scene he was confronted with; a redheaded girl in her pyjamas grabbing the head of a tall dark Asian kid who was holding a live chainsaw.

"Not at all!" Laura smiled as she smacked Wing in the back of the head. When he didn't immediately turn off the chainsaw, she hit him again, still over-smiling.

It took three more hits, each one harder than the last, before Wing finally got that he should turn off the chainsaw and did so, ducking away from Laura swinging her bedside lamp at his head.

"Uhh, hi, I'm Seth." the new kid held out his hand.

"Laura," Laura said, shaking hands. "He's Wing," she jerked a thumb at Wing, who was busy putting away the chainsaw.

"Nice to meet you both. So what exactly was he doing with the chainsaw?" Seth asked cautiously.

"I have no bloody idea. Wing, what were you doing with the chainsaw anyway?" Laura called to Wing, now somewhere in the bathroom. He answered, but neither of them heard it.

"Yeah… so where do I sleep?"

"You've got top bunk," Laura directed Seth to the bunk above Wing's. "Be warned, he snores." Laura said, snuggling up under the covers of her own bunk.

"Like a chainsaw?" Seth laughed, climbing up onto his bed.

"So they say," Laura yawned and rolled over.

Seth lay back and ran his hand back through his short spiked dark brown hair. It had been one hell of a week. This was probably the first time in a while that he didn't feel like he was on the run, chased, or being forced into hurting anyone. It had taken away a lot of the stress that had him wound up to breaking point over the last couple of days.

His quick tour of H.I.V.E. had been slightly reassuring of that feeling of being safe. Even if some students were villainous…

Apparently, everyone here had done something… _selfish…_ to get here.

Seth didn't know if what he'd done was considered selfish, or villainous; he'd just wanted to have a fresh start at life. He'd done some things he wasn't proud of, and the only way people would remember him now was on sight. All electronic record of Seth was gone.

It had taken a while, but slowly, carefully, he'd constructed an alias. Well, not just an alias, but a completely new identity to take over.

So far it hadn't gone well.

He took his iPod out of his pocket and put in the small earphones. DJ Splash started to play in his ears, and he started nodding to the beat of Crying Soul. Seth looked back through the day, his photographic memory serving him well. The headmaster, Nero, had given a speech and then the group had gone through the school, checking out their new home. The size of the place had been staggering. Huge grey concrete caverns somewhere on a small volcanic island in the pacific.

Amazing.

And the Sleepers, they could bring about a problem if he wanted to leave. But Seth had other plans. Being here at H.I.V.E. let him disappear off any radar. It was perfect. No need for secrecy in the open world, afraid someone would recognise him.

A techno remix of Glorious Morning started to play. He had two remixes, and this wasn't the one by DJ Adj, but he forgot the name of the dude who'd done the other one. Sometimes, even photographic memory didn't stop those crazy YouTube usernames from floating away.

It was getting to be really late, and Seth knew that he had a big day ahead of him. He also suspected that he'd be forced into one of those black uniforms. His cargo pants and saint modern hoodie were black, but he still stood out as a newbie at H.I.V.E... The white t-shirt with the stylised graveyard-that-looks-like-a-skull didn't help much either. Or the fact that it was covered in blood. But it was all he'd brought with him.

He remembered the abduction as though it was yesterday… although it actually had been; so no surprises there.

-.-.-.-

Seth was walking down town, head down, hidden in his hoodie. It was a cloudy day, late afternoon really, but overcast, trying to rain but not quite there yet. And the city that never sleeps was looking as lively and bright as ever.

Seth wouldn't have known; he was a long way away from the brightly illuminated neon signs and giant TV screens. He was down the back streets and alleys, looking for a business friend. A fellow criminal of sorts.

He had his knife with him; a wicked sharp double-edged blade that honestly looked more like a dagger. It was in a leather sheath hiding up his left sleeve. The handle was barely visible, and only to the trained eye of someone who knew it was there. Seth had the knife because he wasn't _strong_ strong. He wouldn't win a straight out fist fight by strength alone and he knew it. If it did come to a fight, he'd be dodging and slashing. Jacobs was supposed to help him out with a trip to Paradise, a small town somewhere in Ohio or someplace. Point was, it was a small town, and while Seth didn't have a licence yet, if he did it would show up in the system, which was _not _what the aim was.

Seth turned down yet another dark back-alley and thought he saw something move. It was dark, bulky, and in the shadows. He couldn't tell if it was a large dog or a mugger, but both meant trouble. At worst, it could be an ambush from the police, who were looking for him. He didn't show up in the system, but a lot of them knew him from memory, which was why he needed Jacobs to get him the hell out of here.

The teen backed away, trying to make it look like he'd simply taken a wrong turn. As soon as he couldn't be seen from that particular alley, he rushed away to down the next one. There were also a couple of gangs he'd pissed off around here. Another long story, one that he shouldn't get distracted thinking-

More movement.

Seth turned back, panicking a little now. He saw what looked like a large wrestler in stealth gear point a gun of some sort at him.

He ran.

He sprinted down the backstreets of New York, turning at almost every chance he got to get these new pursuers off his tail. Who the hell were they? Seth didn't want to find out, but if they were looking for a fight, they were going to get it.

"Hold still, will ya?" he heard a grunt behind him, sounding peeved and slightly out of breath, like he'd just been sitting around for a while and hadn't been expecting to be running half a mile.

"Not a chance," Seth snarled coldly, pulling out his knife and driving it into the wrestler mans gun hand, between the ring and middle finger. The man looked like he suddenly wanted to kill Seth, which he supposed was the purpose of this anyway.

He wrenched the knife sideways, causing the man to scream in agony before Seth yanked it out, slicing the wrist too. As soon as the knife was out, the man moved to cradle it with his other arm. Seth sliced upwards; cutting open the palm of the man's other hand. His attacker was almost in the foetal position; almost curled into a ball the pain was so intense.

Seth had run out of mercy a while ago. Not wasting the motion of removing the knife from his pursuer's hand, Seth spun around and drove his elbow down on the back of the man's now-exposed neck.

If he wasn't dead, he sure was out of Seth's way for a while.

The whole thing had taken less than thirty seconds.

Assassin's Creed has its uses, Seth thought, putting the trick back up his sleeve. Gaming wasn't the only place one learnt moves like that. Schoolyard fights was a great place for it.

Oh, god, that was why Seth had gotten in trouble in the first place. "He didn't know his own strength," that's what the adults would have said. And so Seth had wanted to test himself. He had gotten into the fight with the local bully squad. The problem was that Seth had been too good. He didn't have the knife with him, but he'd been agile, hitting them, dodging their own feeble attempts to get him, and he'd ended up finishing them off. One was dead, five others were hospitalised. One would never walk again. Two of them couldn't even recall the fight after hypnotherapy.

And that was why Seth had erased himself. He'd gotten himself a new identity.

Back to the beginning. Again.

It always went like this. Seth thought too much. He led himself into madness. Until the police had arrived at his home, armed. Seth's mother was home with him. Trying to help him, but fearful of him at the same time. Her son was a murderer.

One policeman had been ready to shoot on sight. Isn't it a pity that the bullies were almost always the kids of those in power? The cop's son, local bully leader, was dead. Seth killed him.

He said he'd come quietly. He just wanted to grab a few things from his room.

Seth fingered the handle of his knife. That and the iPod. That was all he had left of home. H.I.V.E. was his new prison.

The policeman wanted justice too fast. He'd wanted to shoot Seth, then and there. Seth's mother had moved between them, trying to get the man to see reason, not to be a murderer himself.

She'd moved too late.

The bullet had gone straight through her, and missed Seth by a hairs breadth. It was fortunate he'd ducked.

As soon as the shot was fired, his mother was dead. Seth's escape was short; out the window, out the garden, backing into the backup.

"You ain't going nowhere, son," the backup had said. Seth was angry. His mother had just been murdered in front of him.

"You aren't going to make it, sorry," Seth had said with a grim smile. He backed away a step, enough to clasp his hands together in a one man handshake. The knife was held backhand style as it poked out both sides of the policeman's neck.

A trail of corpses.

Blood over the black graveyard-skull.

One kid who was prepared to take down the world in the most violent, gory way possible.

All of this ran through Seth's mind for the twelfth time that hour as he climbed up the fire escape to Jacobs's apartment. The lights were on. The night had worn on, and Seth was starting to tire.

The old man was probably in his late forties, but he had that look of a jolly fellow, one with the large gut and gigantic smile that you couldn't help but trust. He did "accounting". He did the actual work and then deducted his own "fee" before giving whoever it was the figures for proper taxes or whatever. Anyway, he stole a lot of money, but wasn't the kind of person who was able to show it off.

"Jacobs," Seth greeted him, "I've got some problems," he started, before he was cut off by a beautiful Russian woman in full tactical loadout.

"I'd certainly call the FBI a problem for you." She said; her accent sounding. She also had twin ninja swords in sheaths attached to the tactical harness.

"Sorry kiddo, but this is probably better and easier than just running away." Jacobs said.

"What the hell are you talking about?!" Seth shouted at Jacobs, outraged.

"You were planning to run. Here's hiding," the old man gestured to the woman, who was pulling out a gun that looked exactly like the one the other guy had tried to use.

"Like hell I'm going with this." Seth spat, grabbing the loaded pistol lying on the table that separated the three. He pointed it first at Jacobs, then the woman, not sure which one he should shoot first.

In the end, the woman had shot him first.


	5. Chapter 5

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch5

_Best Friends Are Always Fighting,_

-.-.-.-

Memories

Raven watched over the screens from the belly of the Shroud, scanning the updates on the student retrievals.

"Team nine, retrieval complete," a voice crackled over the comms system. Team nine, Brazilian girl, ran a team of pickpockets in the favela. Exceptional leadership skills, master of stealth and evasion, highly adept thief. Alpha steam candidate.

"Team seventeen, retrieval complete," another voice reported. Team seventeen, American boy, son of a wealthy banker. Siphoned nearly a million dollars from the accounts of his father and his golf buddies by cloning their credit cards while they were out on the fairways. Politics and finance stream candidate.

"Team twenty nine, retrieval complete." Russian boy, assassin for the mob. Used age as cover to get close to targets. Highly skilled with pistols and knives. Henchman stream candidate. That was one she'd been worried about.

"Team thirty two, retrieval, urgh, failed." The agent sounded to be in extreme pain.

Team thirty two, American boy, recently caused a lot of trouble in New York; killing two people, leaving more hospitalised, and had a run in with the police that left a family member dead. Extremely skilled with knives and almost anything technological. Highly adept fighter, capable of taking down a G.L.O.V.E. agent, it seemed. Raven had no idea of his possible leadership qualities, as he'd been solo the whole time, but with the wide array of skills at his disposal, Alpha stream was most likely best. This had all been from private observation, as the kid had actually managed to erase all data of himself from the government networks.

"What happened?" Raven used the tone mothers do when something goes wrong for the umpteenth time.

"He ran. It's hard to hit targets that move like he does. And then he surprised me with the knife. He's fast, let me tell you; he is _fast_." The disgruntled agent reported.

Raven sighed. It was a good thing she didn't have any other students like this to pick up. She tapped the comms in to Jacobs.

"You're sure he's heading for your place?"

"Positive. He's got nowhere else to go. He's gonna hate me for it but you guys could use his skills." The talent hunter said. Sometimes, it took more than one person to check the area for villainous possibilities.

"Get us down there!" Raven shouted to the pilot, who got the Shroud as close as he could to the drop zone. He couldn't get it to a safe enough point to disembark, so Raven was forced to go down the fire escape to get to Jacobs apartment.

She got in a few moments before the target did.

-/-/-/-

Seth lay strapped to the stretcher, unconscious. The gun had been filled with blanks, but Raven was worried about the mental health of the kid. He was skilled enough that he might pose real risk to some of other students, and that could be trouble. He was the last retrieval to be called in.

The new intake of students.

Why did it feel like they were getting more and more dangerous each year? Raven sighed and strapped herself into seat next to the unmoving teen.

"How much longer till we're home?" she asked the pilot.

"About five hours," He reported.

"Good. Wake me when we're ten minutes out," she said, settling into restful meditation.

_START FLASHBACK ABOUT TEH GLASSHOUSE! _

_O_o_

_END OF FLASHBACK ABOUT TEH GLASSHOUSE!_

Raven was woken when they were about an hour from home, by Seth.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" he was screaming, yelling, straining to get out of the stretcher. He'd started to get the restraints loose a little, and was thrashing about, not caring about the headache that usually came with the Sleeper pulse.

Seth was in one hell of a rage. He was turning into a very violent person.

"Stay still and I might let you out." Raven told him. Seth got the message quick. He stopped fighting long enough for Raven to undo the restraints. He leapt away a few paces as soon as he was free, staring at Raven with bloodshot eyes, sweating, breathing heavily, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, hunched over, ready for a fight.

Raven, for one uncommon moment, had no idea about what she should do. Seth seemed to have an amazing stamina, much like her own. But Seth was swaying slightly further than someone in that kind of fighter stance should of. Raven assumed he did have the Sleeper headache. She couldn't use another pulse on him too soon; it might cause neural feedback issues. Wing was different.

"Hey, try to calm down-"

And that was when the fight started.

It didn't last long, with Raven being the world's deadliest assassin and all, but even in his current state, the agent had been right. Seth was fast. He'd managed to get a few good punches in before Raven retaliated. She tried not to hurt him too badly, but he'd taken a good knock to the head when he hit the floor.

And so now she had him pinned on the stretcher again, trying to get him to stop moving long enough for her to give him a dose of valium. Raven supposed that the dosage should be enough to calm him down, but not so that he was all goofy. And it was going to need to last a while too, which was another problem.

Raven admired his spirit. He never gave up, no matter the odds. And Jacobs had been right about how devious he was. After consulting the manual in the first aid box, she found a dose that should be enough.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Seth asked groggily, slightly aware of the needle in his arm.

"Calming you down." Raven replied. She didn't want another fight, and thankfully Seth wasn't able to start one.

"Go to hell," Seth muttered.

"We're going to H.I.V.E."

-.-.-.-

H.I.V.E.

Raven remembered the trouble she'd had with the retrieval. By now, the valium would have worn off and Seth could have returned to his madness. She hoped he'd realised that this was better than being on the run, the "hiding" as Jacobs had told him. The security footage of him through the day had so far been promising, but that left no indication for tomorrow.

At least the other students who had earned their scholarship through merit were usually mentally reliable.

-.-.-.-

The next morning

Due to possible jet lag and other issues of environment, the new students were given a couple of days to get used to H.I.V.E. before classes started. This meant that the other H.I.V.E. students got a weekend off.

"Good morning," Wing greeted Otto, Shelby, and Max at their table in the cafeteria. "I don't believe I have had the pleasure of meeting you yet," he said to Max, sitting down opposite.

"I'm Max," Max said, mouth full of bacon.

"Wing," Wing said, shaking her hand, "Pleasure to meet you,"

"Same here."

"So what have we got today?" Otto asked Shelby, who was digging in to her own breakfast. Laura and Seth were still grabbing their own. Seth had sort of broken his Blackbox and Laura had needed to help him find a replacement.

"Not much. There's the new students," Shelby wiggled her eyebrows at him, "so we get some time off while they enjoy the jet lag. Wing and I'll be doing self-defence and sparring for most of the morning. You guys wanna watch?"

"I might have a go," Max said thoughtfully, inhaling her food.

"Heh, he's a hard one to beat," Shelby chuckled. For her, just meeting Max had been a dream come true. Finding out that Max had liked her own work when she was the Wraith? Unbelievable. They were instantly friends.

"Hey guys," Laura and Seth had finally arrived.

"I feel so weird in this," Seth muttered, fingering the left sleeve of his new Alpha uniform. "Every school I know allows mufti. Though I suppose there's a reason for it here," he said, looking at the uniforms the other streams wore.

"Yep, we're separated into streams depending on our skills," Shelby explained. "Black for the Alphas, us, grey for Politics and Finance, white for Science and Technology, and last but certainly not smartest, the blue Henchmen." Shelby nodded towards a table of them, loudly arguing about who got the most kills in the last hologram session.

"Bullies?" Seth asked, irritated.

"Most of them. Watch out for Block and Tackle." Otto warned. "I'm Otto, nice to meet you," he shook Seth's hand.

"Seth," Seth nodded. Otto could almost feel the dark mood that surrounded the new kid. It was like he hated the world just for existing.

Once breakfast and introductions were done, the group split up to go do whatever it was they were going to go do. Otto wanted to borrow Laura's internet for some research on the latest big criminal ventures. Laura was off to sneak a peak at HIVEMind's code to see if Professor Pike had left any bugs. The others were going to the training area.

-.-.-.-

Training rooms

"This is really fun to watch, you know," Seth was having a great time, seeing Wing take out Shelby so many times and then going easy on Max just to get his ass handed to him on a silver platter.

"Glad you think so," Wing grunted, picking himself up for eighth time.

"It's more fun if you try it," Max called. She was indeed having fun.

Shelby was the only one who wasn't having as much fun. She wanted to tell her boyfriend to show no mercy, but she also wanted to cheer for Max. So she did both.

"Max rules! Wing, you're gonna need to show no mercy if you want a chance at beating her!" she shouted.

"I shall try," Wing said, calmly raising the light wooden staff. Max was just idling around with hers, whistling a tuneless tune.

"HE-YA!" Wing shouted, trying to surprise Max with a fake outburst of rage. He raised the pole above his head for a vicious overhead strike. She responded by jabbing him quickly in the stomach with her pole. Wing once again lay winded on the floor, gasping for breath.

"Oh, come _on!_" Shelby exasperated, throwing her hands up. "You did better when you were going easy on her!"

Seth was laughing so hard he was having trouble breathing himself. "This is the most fun I've had in ages." He said, wiping away a tear. "Are you sure you don't want the body armour?" he called out to Wing while gesturing to the padded mannequin torso that stood next to him.

Wing didn't respond.

"Hey Seth, what did you do to end up at H.I.V.E.?" Shelby asked, trying to distract herself from the noises her boyfriend was making. Max was repeatedly swinging the wooden staff into his nuts.

"I'd rather not talk about it right now," Seth said, not laughing anymore. "What did you guys do? I hear Max is our infamous Arch-Angel,"

"Yeah, Wing was a legacy student, we think," Shelby said. Upon seeing Seth's confused expression, she added, "that means his parents were villains already. The whole "Family Business" sort of thing," she said, and Seth nodded.

"What do the others get in with? Merit?"

"Pretty much. Otto ran an orphanage mini-gang and actually hypnotised the British Prime Minister a while back,"

"That was him? Heh, I'd been wondering why the PM had been acting like that." Seth rubbed his chin thoughtfully, smiling at an inside joke.

"Laura hacked the military network and redirected air force one to listen in on her friends phone calls to see if they were talking about her behind her back."

"Seriously? Air force one?"

"Something like that anyway," Shelby winced as Wing tried head-butting Max after he'd lost his own staff and tried wrestling with her for hers. Max had pulled away and then pushed Wing down on the ground while he was off balance, and started choking him with the staff.

"And last but not least," Seth smiled, "Shelby Trinity, AKA the Wraith," he said with flourish.

Shelby stared at him. "How did you know?!" she exclaimed.

"I hacked the CIA, FBI, the Pentagon, whatever it was. I erased all known data of me, and all related data about it. While I was there, I had a little look around and found their "Known Criminals" folder. You were in it, as a possible suspect for the identity of the Wrath. I'm guessing you were the Wraith, since you now live at the school of villainy. I deleted the whole folder, but not before I saved a copy to this," he pulled out the iPod and gave it a wiggle. "Even our dear Arch-Angel has a file," he said, putting it away.

"So, you don't exist?" Shelby asked, sceptical.

"You could run a Google search on me and not get anything. You could run a search through all government systems and not get anything. Seth isn't even my real name." he said, winking.

"Who are you, really?" Shelby put a hand on her hip.

Seth turned dark again, and replied in a steely voice, "Not the same person."

Wing finally beat Max, but only because she was focusing on Shelby's conversation with Seth. He was battered and bruised, but he'd tackled Max and managed to keep her on the ground for a full three seconds.

"I'm someone completely new. I can't be who I was, even if I wanted to, even if I tried." Seth truly regretted it all, but was prepared to try doing well at H.I.V.E.

-.-.-.-

Raven watched Seth carefully. It seemed as though he wasn't going to go on a rampage, which was good enough for her.

"Hey Max, do I get to verse the winner?"

This could get interesting…

-.-.-.-

Max swung her pole like a baseball bat, hoping to get Seth in the head. He retaliated by holding his staff vertically along the length of his arm to block the blow before rushing in with a shoulder barge. She sidestepped away, and Seth flicked the staff, swinging Max's feet right out from under her. She hit the deck, and Seth, victorious, offered her a hand up.

"So what's the score now?" he asked.

"Even," Max laughed. "You are a real challenge,"

"I was just about to say the same for you." Seth grinned and Wing groaned.

"Aww, what's wrong big guy?" Shelby gave Wing a quick peck on the cheek.

"I feel useless. I have been teaching you this sort of stuff for ages, and these two seem to beat me easily." Wing frowned.

"I still haven't fought you yet, Wing, there's still a chance," Seth picked up Max's staff and held it out to Wing.

"No thanks, I think I am battered enough already."

"Suit yourself," Seth shrugged, and put the gear away. "So what are we doing next?"

Shelby leant back and put her hands behind her neck. "I dunno," she said, thinking. "We don't actually get many days off like this. We could always take a look around H.I.V.E. and see what kind of trouble we could get into," Shelby grinned.

"Now that sounds like a plan," Max said. "Let's go blow something up!" she whooped and punched the air.


	6. Chapter 6

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch6

_Hidden Secrets and Broken Blackboxes,_

-.-.-.-

Laura, Seth, and Wing's bunk room

Otto continued to scan through the reports of the latest criminal outings. Arch-Angel had disappeared off the radar right after the F-22 crash. There were a couple of articles about a rise in violent crimes in New York, with three deaths being connected to one now missing person. Brazil had a small gang war going on now that one of the gang leaders had disappeared, presumably assassinated by a rival gangs member.

"Anything interesting?" Laura asked from the other side of the room, streaming through endless code.

"Not much," Otto admitted, "but I can almost tell you which ones are students here," he chuckled.

"Any Alphas, you think?"

"Probably two or three," Otto replied. He knew at least one of them _very _well. "How's the debugging?" he asked, wheeling his chair over to watch Laura's screen. It looked almost like the Matrix code, but blue.

"Only three major bugs this year!" Luara said, smiling happily before noticing the look on Otto's face. "Which is, of course, three too many," she gave a small cough.

Otto laughed. "It's like HIVEMind's the brainchild of you and Professor Pike," he said, dodging an incoming pillow.

"Go work on your own brainchild, smarty," Laura teased.

"I don't have one yet," Otto shrugged. "That new security chief doesn't seem to like us very much," he tried changing the subject.

"Dekker's certainly got the hots for you," Laura said with a smile. "I don't think I've seen anybody stalk you the way she does."

"She stalks me?"

"Just have a look at her Blackbox history," Laura said, opening a few windows and furiously typing in some code. "Now, if you look here," she said, pointing to a blank browser, "we can see whatever's on the screen of her Blackbox."

There was a little flash and the birds-eye-view map of H.I.V.E. appeared. The big red dot in the Alphas common room signalled Dekkers position. A text box came up and Otto's name was put in, and a smaller dot, blue, came up in Laura's bunk room. Otto was a little surprised when the big red dot started to move closer to his. But then Laura panicked when her name started to appear in the text box.

"Oh, crap!" she muttered, quickly shutting all the windows on the computer and shoving Otto away.

"Hey!" he fell over onto the floor.

"No time, no time," Laura was panicking, shutting down the other computer and hiding the internet browser icon.

There was a knock at the door, and Laura jumped about a foot in the air.

-.-.-.-

"Seriously…?" Seth raised his eyebrows. "This thing is brand new," he pointed to the Blackbox Dekker was fruitlessly trying to search through.

"It should have been logging your position. Have you been messing around with it?" Dekker accused him.

"Nope. But as I said, it's brand new. I was just going to go see Otto to find out if he could get it working for me." Seth had wandered off, leaving Max, Shelby, and Wing to go to the pools. Seth wasn't the greatest swimmer.

"Do you even know where he is?" Dekker asked, shaking the Blackbox, and then hitting it on the side.

"No," Seth admitted, folding his arms, "But I thought I might stop by the room I've been assigned to see if Laura knows."

"Those four are trouble," Dekker said.

"Those four are the only ones I know here that I haven't wanted to kill recently." Seth said with brute honesty. Dekker laughed.

"Are you saying you want to kill the Chief of Security?" she asked, incredulous.

"I could if I wanted to." Seth turned to leave, but Dekker grabbed his arm.

"You're coming with me. Threatening staff is against the rules."

"What about promises?" Seth twisted around and elbowed Dekker's wrist savagely. Or he tried to. Dekker let him go before the blow landed.

Seth snatched the Blackbox back and walked towards his bunkroom. He didn't look back, but he knew Dekker would probably be following him.

He knocked on the door, still unsure of what he was supposed to do to get in. "How do I get in again?" he called.

The door opened and Laura pulled him in and shut it again. "You enter the code into pad outside, and the door should open. Did you see Dekker on the way over here?" she asked, her face stern.

"Sorta…" Seth grimaced.

"Oh, jeez," Otto spun around back and forth on his chair. "We have another name to add to Dekker's to-do list," he gave a small laugh. "We're trouble magnets aren't we?"

"Dekker's certainly that," Laura and Seth agreed at the same time.

"I'd better go find the others, before something else gets us rep," Laura said, moving to the exit.

"Try the pool," Seth supplied, moving over to sit down next to Otto.

"Thanks,"

"No problem," Seth said with a smile as Laura left. Then he turned to Otto. "So what kind of stuff do we do here when classes start up? Build Nukes?"

"Not quite. In tech it's mostly super lasers and circuitry stuff. There's Stealth and Evasion with Ms Leon, and physical stuff with Colonel Francisco. Just wait until you see the grappler cavern," Otto grinned. "There's supposedly a shark in the pool but I don't think so,"

"Hah! Sharks at school? Whose stupid idea was that?" Seth laughed. "I thought we were supposed to survive and be criminal masterminds or something," he said.

"I'll make sure to tell Colonel Francisco that you think his sharks idea was stupid." Otto said dryly.

"Oh yeah, do you know what's going on with my Blackbox? I can't seem to get it to work. It's probably me being stupid, but could you see if it's working like it should?" Seth asked. Otto took the Blackbox and had a quick look through it. It wasn't working right because it had no student registered to it. Otto quickly texted HIVEMind using his own Blackbox to get Seth's registered.

"It should work now," Otto said, handing it back. "It didn't know it was supposed to be yours, so it didn't do anything. But HIVEMind's set it up for you."

"Wow, thanks," Seth started checking the limits of what he was allowed to do with his Blackbox. "We can text?" he asked humorously.

"Yeah, we used to have video calls but some problems came up and this was easier on the system," Otto said, restarting the computer with internet. "It's Blackbox to Blackbox only, so you can't text cell phones." He warned.

"Awesome." Seth started playing around with the map of H.I.V.E... He found a search option and immediately put in the names of all the people he knew here. Otto, Nero, Dekker, Laura, Max, Wing, Shelby, Block, Tackle, Ms Leon, Colonel Francisco.

"Who's the ninja?"  
"That would be Raven," Otto said, looking through reports of the chaos in Rio that occurred a few months back. "Did you taser her?" he asked distractedly.

"No, but I almost shot her." Seth replied, putting "Raven" into the search query. Almost all the dots were next to the pool. Raven and Nero were somewhere in the staff areas, and Block and Tackle were in the holographic training rooms. Probably killing some poor piece of code, no doubt.

"Looks like Laura found them. And Dekker seems to be giving the lot of them trouble." Seth reported. Otto was still no closer to finding out how his girlfriend-

Had he just described Max as his girlfriend?

Otto was still no closer to finding out how… Max… had gotten a hold of one of Raven's twin katana and get in the news. There was a lot of publicity about the moustache on the statue of Jesus. A _rainbow_ moustache. Lots of the news articles called it blasphemy, while a couple of others said it matched Rio's beach-party-central personality as a city. Otto was more inclined to the party side of it. He texted Max to see if they were OK.

-/-/-/-

To: Maxine Ride

From: Otto Malpense

_You guys got trouble with Dekker?_

-/-/-/-

To: Otto Malpense

From: Maxine Ride

_Interrogations ahoy – missing you more and more xoxo_

-/-/-/-

Otto thought the way HIVEMind had branded her Maxine was odd, but then he supposed it was easier to explain than a name like Maximum. Nero's first name was Maximilian, but that was different.

"Bored!" Seth called out to nowhere, having finished searching through the Blackbox. "Laura won't mind, will she?" he asked, wriggling the mouse for the computer she had abandoned.

"Probably not. Try not to kill HIVEMind," Otto turned back to his studies again.

Seth looked through the list of recently used programs. There was an app for HIVEMind's code. He wasn't going to kill HIVEMind, but he wouldn't mind a look at his coding…

Maybe later. First he had to unlock his Blackbox. Seth found a USB converter and plugged the Blackbox into the computer. "Time to hack the box," he said, wringing his fingers together and pushing outwards to loosen them up a little. He brought open the "view files" window and selected for hidden files to be viewable. There were just a couple of firewalls, designed for preventing the Blackbox from accessing files on the staff and security, which he supposed were all camera footage and lesson plans. He tried to delete them, but there was something in the coding that stopped that.

Seth dove deeper, and found a very advanced set of coding. He had to actually think about what was in there before acting, which he didn't need to bother with when corrupting the Pentagon. Long story, but while erasing himself, he corrupted the Pentagon's main firewall and sent the IP to get in over to the WikiLeaks guy.

His fingers flew over the keyboard, and he started smashing apart the code. If he simply corrupted it, he'd cripple the Blackbox and need to get a new one. He also suspected that if he didn't do it right, HIVEMind would find out too.

-.-.-.-

At the Pool

Colonel Francisco had set up a pool party. Nobody knew why, but nobody was prepared to ask in case he forced them to do laps around the gym. Music was playing loudly, there was a net for pool volleyball, and assorted floating beds were available as well as the latest gill technology.

"Hey Shelby!" Max called from the top of the diving board, waving to her new friend who was down in the pool, splashing Wing. Shelby grinned and waved back. "Check this one out!" she cried.

Max jumped a couple of times and leapt into the air, twisting and flipping so many times that even Nigel lost count. "Yahoo!" she hit the pool with a huge splash, ending in an un-poetic bomb.

"Hah! Take that Franz!" Max yelled to the roof after finally surfacing. She and Franz were having a bombing contest. Max, with her MUCH smaller frame, was losing by a lot, but it was fun watching the chaos Franz's ungraceful leaps caused.

"I can be beating that!" Franz proclaimed, standing on the end of the other diving board, doing that thing professionals do that involved holding your arms out by your sides until your feet were off the ground. Franz leapt, and sort of half screamed/half yelled a war cry as he fell, tumbling through the air. He tried to air swim, but just body slammed the water in the end.

The tidal wave he caused swamped Nigel's floating pink airbed, and absolutely soaked him. Max dived under with Shelby to watch from below as Wing was picked up and thrown onto some poor bystander walking along the pool edge. In the other direction, the wave took out half a volleyball team and got a blow-up shark caught in the net.

"FRANZ!" Colonel Francisco bellowed. Franz surfaced and looked fearfully at the Colonel. "I give it a twelve!"

Franz was so relieved he almost forgot he was swimming.

"Hey, you just won again, don't drown on us now!" Max laughed, trying to drag the big boy back up. It was a good thing he floated well.

"We might need to check up on Wing's poor cushion," Shelby reminded her, barely holding in her laughter at the sight of Max trying to keep Franz afloat.

"I suppose you're right. Nigel! You OK?" she called out to her new bald acquaintance.

"Blub- fine!" Nigel spluttered, trying to get back up on his airbed. Max saw the perfect opportunity and dived underneath Nigel, bending her arms back, grabbing his feet and swimming upwards as fast as possible. Poor Nigel tried to keep his balance and straighten up, which was exactly what Max had needed. She pushed him upwards into the air and let go, sending him screaming up and over the pink plastic airbed. His splash was smaller than Franz's, but all his thrashing added to the chaos.

Shelby was laughing so hard her sides hurt. "You are so mean," she commented when Max swum over.

"Nah, its all fun-" Max suddenly disappeared, and Shelby felt someone swimming under her…

"Oh, no, Max no-no-no-no-no-nooooo!" she screeched and laughed as Max came up and flung her into the air. Shelby achieved a full three forward flips before coming crashing down on top of Max. As soon as Max noticed that Shelby was going to land exactly where she went up, she panicked and _tried _to swim away, but the girls collided roughly.

"I give it a two!" Francisco bellowed to them, thumbs down. Then he put his shades back down, adjusted his military green beret and relaxed on the lounger.

_Lifeguard, my ass,_ Max thought giggling, dragging herself and Shelby onto the poolside area.

"Don't you ever do that to me again!" Shelby laughed, fetching a towel to dry off. Max just flicked the water off her arms and out of her hair. She was wearing the kind of swimsuit that surfers use, so she was already still mostly dry. Shelby, on the other hand, was in an attractive neon pink bikini, matching her party attitude.

"Of course not," Max winked, wringing out her hair. "So what's taking Wing so long?" she asked, looking out to see if she could find her new tall dark mysterious friend.

"Dekker," Shelby grumbled, seeing who it was. "She hates us."

"I wonder why?" Max tilted her head. "After all, we're not evil criminal masterminds…"

"Yet," they said at the same time.

Wing was in trouble. Dekker had taken the liberty of taking their uniforms and Blackboxes out of the changing rooms after Wing's "stop in to say hello". Max was sick of authority figures and their tests and expectations of them. She'd gone through enough of that at the School, before the break in where she'd escaped. She didn't know if anybody else had made it out that day, but the chances of finding another escaped experiment was getting slimmer and slimmer the more she thought about it.

There weren't that many experiments that were actually successful, and even less that could pass for human. After that, they'd have to be villainous and get into H.I.V.E. before Max would see them.

Jeb had been one of the Whitecoats who'd died in the initial explosion. The walls came crumbling down, and the Erasers were out in force. Max had barely escaped.

It was a lonely existence. But someone was forced to live it.

-.-.-.-

"God, she's terrible!" Max exclaimed from the bathroom, trying to get out of her swimsuit. She was having a little bit of trouble. The zipper running down the back of the suit kept catching on her feathers.

"Tell me about it. On second thoughts, don't," Laura watched as Seth continued to write coding for his Blackbox. It was an interesting program, but she honestly had no idea what it was for. Wing and Otto were off doing something with the chainsaw.

"Need any help in there?" Shelby called after hearing Max yelp in frustration.

"No, I'm fine," Max replied, straining a little. That last tug had taken out a feather from one of the more sensitive parts of her wing.

They'd all been thoroughly interrogated about what they'd been up to. No particular reason, other than they'd already been responsible for the near-destruction of H.I.V.E. on at least four separate occasions, one of the more recent ones being Otto's surprise party for Raven. The one where half the Alpha accommodations block was blown to bits.

"That sounds like hard work," Seth grunted absentmindedly, hearing more grunts and moans of frustration coming from the bathroom.

"That's it, you need help," Shelby got up from Laura's bed and made her way to the bathroom door. "Cover your eyes, Seth," she whispered at him, and he grunted something unintelligible in response.

Max heaved, hunching over to try and get the tips of her wings free when Shelby pressed the button to open the door. At the same time, Max's wings finally came free and shot out now that there was nothing restraining them.

Shelby screamed as the feathery mass hit her full on. She fell back, raising an arm in defence, tripping over Laura and taking them both out.

"Huh?" Seth finally looked up from his work to see Max's wings retracting quickly. "Holy," he breathed, standing up. "You really are an Angel," he said, leaning on the doorframe while Shelby and Laura picked themselves up. Max sat curled up in a ball on the floor, head in hands, and still only half way out of the wetsuit. "Hey, what's wrong?" Seth asked, moving closer.

"I'm a freak." Max sobbed. "And now the secret's out. I suppose you guys think I'm a mutant or something now," she turned away, her wings shifting with her.

"Max… oh, what I wouldn't give to have wings like you," Seth said softly. "You're an angel, not a freak. OK, so you're a villainous angel, but still," he finally got Max to cheer up a little. Crouching down beside her, he put an arm around her shoulders. Shelby and Laura watched from the doorway. "I'm thinking this is how you escaped the queens' place," he said, rubbing her back between her wings.

Max sighed. She shouldn't get so emotional over this, and hated that she did, but she'd kept her secret for so long. It wasn't nice having a party ruining it.

"You still need help out of the swimsuit?" he asked. It was a kind gesture, but he wasn't sure about how he'd carry it out if Max needed it. She laughed.

"I think I'm good for now," she said, shooing him away.

"What happened to "cover your eyes, Seth"?" Shelby said once the door closed.

Seth shrugged and smiled. "I've always been smooth with the ladies," he said in a real slick tone, wiggling his eyebrows and bowing a little. It was a joke but Shelby still whapped him in the face with a pillow anyway.

"I'll have you know she's dating Otto!" she teased, before realising Laura was in the room too. "Uhh, oops?"

-/-/-/-

To: Otto Malpense

From: Laura Brand

_You…_

-/-/-/-

**CLIFFHANGER!**


	7. Chapter 7

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch7

_Shattered Hearts,_

-.-.-.-

Otto's in deep trouble…

Otto didn't know he'd gotten a text from Laura. He was too busy disposing the "Evidence" of his and Wing's messing around with the chainsaw.

So he was extremely surprised to find Max with Seth, crying into his shoulder. Laura was borrowing Shelby's shoulder to cry on while Shelby glared at Otto.  
He guessed Shelby had tripped up on the "secret" part of the word secret.

"I'm in trouble, aren't I?" he said when he saw this sad scene in Wing's bunk room.

"No shit, Sherlock," Seth replied. "You said it yourself; you're a real trouble magnet. I didn't know you meant it like _this_!" he angrily gestured to Laura and Max with his left hand, since he was holding Max together with the other.

Wing scooted off to return the chainsaw to Colonel Francisco. He didn't want to be a part of sorting out his friend's relationship problems.

"I'm sorry," Otto started.

"You're sorry," Seth repeated him dryly. "Well, it's a start at least."

"I'm extremely sorry," he tried, helpless.

"Trust me," Seth said, scowling, "this is worse than trying to explain to your girlfriend that you're a murderer." He put his other hand around Max, who'd started to sob even harder.

"I honestly don't know how it happened," Otto pleaded, "I really don't,"

"What has been said cannot be un-said," Shelby apologised to Laura. "I'm sorry too. He should have told you himself," she returned to glaring at Otto.

"Maybe we should leave while you explain yourself?" Seth said, untangling himself from Max. Shelby nodded mutely and got up too.

They left Otto in there, struggling for words as his friends left him to his fate.

"You had a girlfriend before H.I.V.E.?" Shelby whispered, shocked, as they moved to one of the many couches scattered through the common room.

"Not really. We'd just started dating and then I accidentally killed the local bully leader. It's kinda hard to explain," Seth admitted, "but it didn't go so well after that. The police came around and," his voice choked up, "and they killed mom," he turned away. It's hard losing a family member. "Then I just disappeared the old fashioned way: kill anyone who's trying to bring you in,"

_A trail of corpses._

_A bloody skull._

"I had no idea," Shelby whispered sympathetically. "Do you need a moment?" she asked.

"No, it's all done and gone anyway," Seth frowned, "We still have another day before classes start, don't we?"

"Yeah. No ideas how we're gonna spend it though, with Otto's relationship troubles and all," Shelby replied. "It's almost curfew." She checked her Blackbox. "Half an hour before lockdown," she reported.

"Otto's one messed up kid," Seth leant back and shook his head. Then he put his hands behind his neck and asked, "So what's his history like? You guys have apparently been causing a lot of trouble around here,"

"It's a looooonnnggg story," Shelby smiled. "HIVEMind is a pretty advanced AI, isn't he? Well, he's second generation. The first was an evil AI named Overlord, and he didn't have half the restraints he should of," she started.

"Behaviour restraints, no-evolution matrix, and I'm guessing someone forgot to tell him that killing half the human race isn't the way to save them?"

"Actually he just wanted to enslave all of us,"

-.-.-.-

The halls

Raven was just looking around, making sure everything was where it should be… and then Otto appeared. He certainly wasn't where he should be.

"It's after curfew-" she started, preparing to take him to Nero for punishment.

"Yeahsorrybye!" Otto quickly gasped as he ran past. Raven didn't know what to think of it. Was this a new tactic for escaping H.I.V.E.? She didn't get long to ponder it before Laura came around the corner.

"Which way?" she glared.

Raven pointed her innocently in the wrong direction.

"Thanks," Laura had never been the person to enjoy a physical workout, but Raven could tell by the way she was running that Otto's love of Max had gotten out.

Then she heard flapping. Like an eagle the size of a hummer was speeding down the halls. She truly hoped it wasn't one of Pike's experiments with a shrink-ray gone wrong again.

It wasn't.

"Which way?" Max glared, her magnificent wings keeping her aloft.

Raven pointed innocently in the _other _wrong direction. Hopefully she could separate the three long enough to get the full story.

"Thanks," Max powered down the halls, but ignored Raven's directions and went down the third hall; the same one Otto had gone down. Not good.

Raven whipped out her Blackbox and ran a search for their tracking chips. Laura was going the wrong way, as planned. She would get to the next intersection of the halls before Otto did. Max had just overshot Otto, who seemed to be hiding in one of the offices. Then there was a small surprise as Max slowed and turned back towards Otto's hiding place.

She was using her own Blackbox to track him!

"I have to remember to ask HIVEMind about making this a staff-only feature." Raven shook her head, moving towards Otto's little diminishing dot. Max had found him, and when Raven zoomed in on the map, there seemed to be a lot of commotion.

She dreaded what Otto was being forced to go through right now, but she supposed it was what the cheating bastard deserved.

-.-.-.-

"Otto,"

"Max,"

"Steve!" a monotone robotic voice interrupted. In order to test the translator collar Miss Leon wore, Professor Pike had tested several versions on this little monkey, who seemed to like saying "Steve!" all the time.

Otto pushed the monkey away, and resumed making out with Max. They were having a great time. Otto thought Max might have come to beat him up, but was pleasantly surprised instead. Their kisses became gentler, and less hungry, the longer time went on.

"Steve!" the little monkey ran out into the halls, throwing poop.

"He _really_ ruins the mood," Max sighed, detangling herself from Otto. "And I can't remember _why _I was so pissed off at you. Can you remember?"

"Uhh, no," Otto lied terribly.

"I don't care!" Max shouted at him, shoving him away.

"What?" now Otto was really confused.

"STAY OUT OF MY HEAD!" she screeched, folding down onto the floor, clawing at her head, moaning in frustration. "You're always in here whenever I'm with you," Max snarled, tapping the side of her head. Her hair fell about her face, giving her an insane look. "_Love me, hold me,_" she mimicked. "WHY?!"

"I have no idea-"

"Don't give me lies!" Max shouted, picking up the one chair in the small office and throwing it at his head. Otto dived out of the way, barely surviving. "I wondered why you were sooo irresistible," she hissed, the pair circling each other, Otto weary of another attack. "Why would I like you? I have no idea _who _you are, _what _your history is... how I can be sure you aren't a spy for the School!" she shrieked, pulling at her hair now.

"Uh, we're in the school," Otto pointed out, not getting that it was the _School_.

"You're still in my head," Max's hands were shaking. "Did you do this to _Laura_?" she smiled the madman's smile, almost breaking.

"I-"

"Otto," Raven stood at the doorway, watching Max like a hawk.

She had one hand on one of the katana strapped to her back. Max didn't know. She could only see and hear Otto. She didn't even know what was in the room with them. The desk, Professor Pike's, jabbed her in the leg.

"Ow," Max moaned, feeling for the table. "What hit me? Why am I blind?!"  
Laura was still running through the halls. She'd probably realised by now that Raven had given her false directions.

"The table," Raven said. Max couldn't hear her, even though she was standing barely meters away. "Can you hear me?" she asked, annoyed that Max didn't respond.

"Raven-" Otto started, but was interrupted by Max punching him in the face.

"She's here… but I don't see her," Max studied the world around her. There was nothing in it. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!" she screamed, climbing on top of Otto and repeatedly bashing his face with her fists. She was crying. One of her flock from the School was blind. Or he had been until he'd been murdered.

"Max!" Raven tried to restrain the bird-child, but she slid out of her grip. When Raven finally managed to prevent Max from doing any more serious damage to Otto, Max broke down in tears and sobs. "Max!" Raven tried again.

"Raven?" Max whispered, confused. "My head… it's been buzzing ever since I first touched Otto… what's going on?" her head shook violently, like a bee had just flown too close to her ear.

"I don't know." Raven said, pulling Max up. "But we're going to see if HIVEMind has any idea."

-.-.-.-

"Scanning…" HIVEMind droned, scanning Miss Ride's body with X-Ray, WiFi, and an assortment of other things that people would generally relate to cancer causes. HIVEMind had found out about Miss Ride's wings a while ago. Right about when she flew off after curfew. He was going to need to install extra security measures to make sure the automatic turrets didn't shoot her down, thinking she was an unmanned aircraft of some sort.

Later, later.

HIVEMind's wireframe head flickered to life at the sick bay's holo-station that Raven was using to communicate with him. Otto, Laura, Max, and Dekker were there. Raven had tried to get Dekker to piss off, considering how much the three hated her, and the fact that this was a private matter… but Dekker had called the "I'm Chief of Security!" card.

Wait.

A blip.

"HIVEMind?" Raven asked, concerned. She knew that S.A.I., the Self Aware Internet, was dealt with, but the way HIVEMind's head appeared and hadn't said anything for a minute unnerved her. Could S.A.I. have damaged something critical?

"Investigating…" HIVEMind's head disappeared again. The device… HIVEMind recorded data for analysis.

Data on the technological anomaly regarding Miss Ride

Location: left forearm of Maxine Ride.

Purpose: unexplainable at current time.

Connectivity: none so far. Too soon to be sure. More testing required. Signals have been registered.

Overlord device: unlikely. However special conditions of Maxine Ride's body leave this to be subject to suspicion. Wings: classified information; whole folder to be stuck at N.O.V.A. security clearance.

All else relevant: appearance of a tracking chip. Likely a risk to H.I.V.E. location security if it is. Cannot be removed or disabled without Maxine Ride losing the use of her arm, possibly permanently. Other methods of disablement would likely cause damage to Miss Ride. EMP burst un-applicable due to H.I.V.E. system functionality.

"HIVEMIND! Did you find anything or not?!" Dekker slammed a fist down on the sensitive desk-like structure that contained the hologram emitters.

"Don't do that," Raven said calmly, her glowing purple sword appearing at Dekker's throat. "Just because you're Chief of Security doesn't mean you get to smash important gear whenever you feel like it," she said, slowly putting the sword away.

Max was unconscious on what looked to be an MRI or CAT scanner. They'd used the same stuff they'd used to put her into a coma. If she was kept in this state for more than a few hours, so soon after she woke up from the last one, there was risk of permanent damage being done to her systems. However, with her genetic makeup being of questionable origins, there was no telling what might happen, or if the damage had already been done.

"But we need to know-"

"I agree, but this isn't the time or place for breaking things." Raven shut Dekker out of the room before HIVEMind mentioned the wings. "Go make sure there's nobody in warehouse 2," she suggested.

"Otto," Laura scowled at him, "you have some serious explaining to do," she folded her arms menacingly.

Otto already had a black eye and bruises all over his face from when Max had gone from happy to be with him to insane why-does-it-feel-like-you-use-mind-control-to-get- all-the-girls? "Uhh, I'm not sure I even know what's going on anymore,"

"Testing, testing," Seth's voice came from the holo-projector. Then his head flickered to life, fully rendered, but 2D. Shelby was in the background. "Oh, shit," Seth said, seeing the look on Raven's face. Before anybody could say anything, he disappeared and was replaced by HIVEMind.

"He broke it," HIVEMind said glumly, shaking his wireframe head.

"Broke _WHAT_? Who? And can you tell me what it is you're investigating?! I'm starting to run out of patience," Raven was really getting annoyed. She didn't need beauty rest or anything, but she didn't like being up this late when she didn't need to be; which gave her another thought. "And the students need their rest. We don't want them suffering from jet lag on the days they were supposed to be recovering from it."

"Master Seth Walker broke the firewalls. Shall I-"

"Just get on with what we're doing here. I'll deal with Seth later," Raven growled.

Laura was just shaking her head, smiling. "So that's what it was for…"

"HIVEMind, what did you find?" Raven demanded.

"Miss Ride has a chip in her left forearm that appears to have been implanted at birth. It appears to be a tracking chip, but there are no long range signal frequencies coming from the device. There are however, some short range frequencies that appear to be directed at Otto. The device also appears to be receiving data from Otto also. I cannot intercept them due to the…" HIVEMind struggled for a word that was appropriate for the situation, "nature… of the signals. It appears Miss Ride may capable of the same electronic abilities that Otto has power over. However, seeing Miss Ride's reaction to the "buzzing" in her head, it is highly unlikely that these powers have developed properly or are fully capable of being used yet, if at all." HIVEMind explained.

"Well." Raven blinked in surprise. "That's a surprise. You say the signals were between Otto and Max only?"

"Affirmative,"

Raven turned to Laura, and put a hand on her shoulder. "You know what S.T.D.'s are, right?" Laura nodded. Raven gave Otto her best evil grin. "I think Otto caught a virus,"


	8. Chapter 8

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch8

_Dekker's a B-_

-.-.-.-

Of course Laura took it the wrong way. She'd given Otto his other black eye before Raven told her it had been a joke.

"_Signally_ Transmitted Disease!" Raven yelled at her, pulling Laura away from poor Otto. "None of you guys can take a joke," she muttered.

-.-.-.-

Lunch Hall

"So Otto got an S.T.D., Max gave him a black eye, Laura can't take a joke, and I'm not allowed to play with the firewall without getting burnt," Seth leant back, hands behind his head. "I don't know about you guys, but I reckon something's going to explode by the end of the day,"

"More than likely," Wing concluded.

"I hope not," Max croaked, facedown on the table, suffering from another coma induced headache. She looked kinda ghastly.

"I think it would be a good idea to avoid doing anything a normal person would avoid doing, for once." Otto interjected, his black eyes making him look a bit like panda-kid.

"I say we steal something," Laura said. When everyone looked at her, she added, "what? This _is _the school of higher _villainy_,"

"Pool party?" Shelby asked, confused.

"I don't swim," Seth declined. "But I might mess with the stereo system," he looked at her, grinning.

"I'm gonna steal Nigel's airbed," Max declared shakily, raising her head off the table before plonking it down again. "Ow."

"Seriously…" Seth shook his head. "I think you, Wing, and Laura might be the only ones actually swimming, Shelby,"

"Aww," Shelby's shoulders slumped. "So we don't have anything we can actually do today?"

"Don't think so. We might actually have to use it for _rest_!" Seth said, no longer leaning back. "Can you believe that? Doing something we're told to?!"

Of course, that's when Raven checked up on them.

-.-.-.-

Much later

"Told you so," Seth coughed, choking out smoke. Shelby waved her hand in front of her face, trying to blow away the smoky remains of the explosion.

"Did you really have to do that?" she asked.

"What? The force field was directed towards the inside of the sword, and turning up the power made it sharper, so I thought-"

"I shall note the date and time of this remarkable event," Shelby said, looking for a light switch. "Thinking about it _after _putting the battery in the wrong way…" Seth and Shelby had snuck off to Professor Pike's "armoury" that he used to supply Raven's gear. There'd been five spare Variable Geometric Force Field Katana, and Seth had just broken one of them.  
"Very funny. Anyway, it was supposed to direct the force field outwards. Its like when you try and push two magnets together and they don't want to near each other," Seth explained. The explosion had given out a small EMP like effect. Or maybe it had just smashed the lightbulb. Either way, neither of the Alphas could see anything.

"And what were you planning to do with this information?" Shelby asked sarcastically.

"Basically, a hover board." Seth smiled. "Just tilt forward and the front of it will still be pushing on the ground, and since it's at an angle, it should push you forward,"

"Practical uses?" Shelby didn't like the idea much, as she'd never bothered with skateboarding.

"Fun, fast getaway vehicle, and while I doubt it, it may work over water." Seth shrugged. He'd just wanted a hover board.

"So it won't be like in Iron Man?" Shelby found the air vent that they'd used to crawl in undetected. "Over here," she directed.

"Thanks. Iron man was different. I'm not sure how it may have worked, but it hadn't needed anything to push against, you know? This stuff which is, amazingly, real, would actually need something solid to push against. After all, if it's a board, it'll be holding up your weight as well." Seth said, following Shelby through the vent. She kicked his head lightly. "_Ow_!"

"I don't weigh that much!" she whispered fiercely, annoyed.

"You weigh more than air," Seth said, rubbing the top of his head. "Even the board would. And air isn't dense enough for the board to push itself up. Water might be dense enough, but probably only at extreme pressures, which isn't the ideal place to be."

"Point taken. Ah, here's our stop," Shelby kicked open the grille and rolled out. She turned in mid-air and landed gracefully, or at least quiet and stealthily.

Seth brutally landed on a desk with a crash that could probably have been heard from New Mexico. He gave Shelby a huge fright. She shrieked and clapped her hands over her mouth, beginning to get highly annoyed with Seth's lack of skill in this area. Ironically, they'd landed in Ms Leon's classroom.

"Argh," Seth twisted his back and stretched it out. "I think I landed on something," he said, feeling pain in his lower back.

"Yeah, THE DESK!" Shelby stomped her foot to convey how much of a fright it had been.

"Let's just get out of here before-" Seth started, but then froze as soon as he heard the sound of running feet in the halls outside. "Shit!" he dived down under the desk and Shelby quickly jumped back into the vent and pulled the grille shut.

"They're in here somewhere!" the horrible voice of Dekker bellowed.

"New Mexico would probably know they're in here!" Ms Leon yelled right back, annoyed at Dekker for crashing into the room like King Kong farting on a newspaper stand.

Seth could hear the voice of Ms Leon, but he didn't know who it belonged to, or how they'd gotten into the room without making any noise. All he'd seen was a fluffy white cat asleep on one of the bookshelves.

"Their Blackbox signals must be glitched then," Dekker said angrily. Seth grinned. "One of them was reported messing around with their Blackbox last night,"

"Then get Professor Pike to look into it and leave me alone," the second voice demanded. Seth got the impression that Dekker was probably the least-liked staff member at H.I.V.E.

The cat jumped down from on top of the desk and landed in front of Seth. It turned to study him for a moment, and he held a finger to his lips, wondering why he was asking a cat not to reveal his position, huddled under the teacher's desk. The cat looked at him funny before walking around to the other side of the classroom.

"Pike doesn't see anything wrong with students hacking the system," Dekker snarled. "He really should change his attitude towards school security," she said.

"You mean you?" the second voice said dryly. "I think he sees it as skill. If they can hack the system, then they must be good at what they do, which is exactly what we want here at H.I.V.E.,"

"Fine," Dekker stalked off.

"See you at dinner," the second voice said, moving away. As soon as Seth heard the door shut, he cautiously came out of his hiding place. The fluffy white cat had moved back up to the bookshelf, and seemed to be trying to get back to sleep.

Seth looked around quickly, making sure there wasn't anything else that might pose a risk to him and Shelby. "Coast's clear!" he whispered loudly. Shelby quietly popped open the grille and poked her head out. "Let's get out of here," Seth opened the door and checked to make sure Dekker wasn't waiting in the halls for them.

"I'll catch up in a minute," Shelby said, eyeing the cat thoroughly.

"Suit yourself," Seth shrugged. "See you by the pools?" he asked.

"Yeah," Shelby said as she watched him leave.

"Your friend really needs some training in stealth," Ms Leon winced as much as she could, being a cat.

"I know, right? You should have seen him earlier when we were trying to get up there in the first place," Shelby giggled.

"Yes… what _were_ you two doing up there?" Ms Leon scrutinised her favourite student.  
"Oh, he said something about those force fields on Raven's swords and the batteries going in backwards to make him a hover board." Shelby replied; waving a hand towards the armoury she'd just escaped.

"And?" Ms Leon looked close into Shelby's slightly scorched but rather blackened face.

"It blew up." Shelby turned to put the air-vent's grille back into place. "But first it actually pushed everything away from it. I think he had it set on sharp when he put the battery back it,"

"Interesting. So it looks like a bomb went off in there?"

"It did." Shelby half grimaced. "But why are you so interested? I thought it'd be more Science stream stuff,"

"A hover board might let us stealthy thieves work around pressured flooring-" Ms Leon fantasized before Shelby interrupted.

"Nope, it needs to push on something. It wouldn't even go over water," Shelby said sadly, heading to the door.

"Well there goes the Jesus Boots idea," Ms Leon said, causing Shelby to laugh.

"I'd better go clean up and find the others," Shelby excused herself, leaving Ms Leon to her cat nap.

-.-.-.-

"How much longer till we hear "I told you so,"?" Max asked, lying on Nigel's airbed and still recovering from the last of her migraine. Her hair was strewn about in the water, like a floating blonde halo.

"Not much longer," Seth replied, sitting by the pool edge, but not close enough to fall in. "Just waiting for Laura to get over here without drowning Otto,"

Otto was having a really bad day. First Laura had been mysteriously concerned that Otto wouldn't be able to swim properly, and had absolutely covered him in floaties. Then she'd decided that Otto could swim well enough without them and insisted on taking them off him while he was underwater.

So far, she'd only gotten his board shorts accidentally removed twice.

"Oh, good, we can live on without knowing about the explosion," Max grinned, adjusting her shades.

"So, still the wetsuit despite the trouble you had last time?" Seth asked, leaning back in his seat.

"Yeah. Hopefully I'll manage without you this time," she winked, and Seth grinned.

"We'll see. Where's Shelby gotten to?" he asked, looking around for her. Then, ignoring all movie clichés of "Never Look Up", he looked up. "Oh," he said.

"Oh?" repeated Max.

"Look's like Franz gets first jump," Seth smiled. "You good for tidal surges?" he snickered.

Max looked up at the diving boards to see Shelby and Franz arguing about something. It didn't look like a simple splashing contest this time.

"I might hop out," Max conceded. She started pushing the airbed to the poolside. "I'm kinda bored anyway," she admitted. Then she remembered something. "Why's your face all black?" she asked, getting out.

"I put the battery in the wrong way," Seth smiled at the memory. "And… I told you so,"

"Blub," Max responded, pretending to be a fish.

"Incoming shark," Seth warned, pointing at the poor little inflatable shark surging towards them, thrown about by the Franz Tide. Max turned and kicked it in the face, sending it twirling back to bump Shelby in mid-air.

"Good aim," Seth said, nodding appreciatively.

"Thanks," Max grinned and looked around for something else to kick. Finding nothing, she turned back to Seth, disappointed. Then she groaned and sat down beside him, clutching her forehead. "I hate headaches. And you might wanna clean off before Dekker suspects something,"

"I don't swim, if that's what you're asking," Seth replied. "I'm heading back to my cell; apparently HIVEMind's issued a swap around since you and Laura can't keep your hands off Otto," he grinned. Max pulled her hair into a ponytail and flicked the water at his face, slightly peeved.

"I can keep my hands off him, thank you very much!" she pouted, sticking her lip out.

Seth laughed. "Oh, really? What on earth have you got to distract yourself?" he asked.

Max thought for a moment. She could either really embarrass him or chuck him in the pool, but by the time she'd decided to chuck him in the pool, he'd already started wandering back to the Alphas common room. So instead, she pulled out her Blackbox.

-/-/-/-

To: HIVEMind

From: Maxine Ride

_Seth mentioned a bunkroom swapparound_

-/-/-/-

To: Maxine Ride

From: HIVEMind

_New room assignments have been arranged. New assignments are:_

_Wing Franchu, Shelby Trinity, and Otto Malpense in room 27_

_Maxine Ride, Laura Brand, and Seth Walker in room 34_

_I trust this is a satisfactory arrangement?_

-/-/-/-

To: HIVEMind

From: Maxine Ride

_Hmm… I suppose its good enough. Can I ask about something confidential?_

-/-/-/-

To: Maxine Ride

From: HIVEMind

_Depends on which confidential. I assume you are wishing to discuss the wings?_

-/-/-/-

To: HIVEMind

From: Maxine Ride

_Yeah… who knows about them?_

-/-/-/-

To: Maxine Ride

From: HIVEMind

_From what I can gather through security footage, all of which that contains images of your wings stuck at N.O.V.A. security clearance, only: Raven – Otto Malpense – Laura Brand – Maxine Ride – Seth Walker – Shelby Trinity – and I, know. Nero has not seen them but I am under strict orders from Raven that nobody is to know without your express permission or through your demonstration. _

-/-/-/-

To: HIVEMind

From: Maxine Ride

_Thanks._

-/-/-/-

Max looked up to see Shelby looking down at her. Her face wasn't so blackened with soot anymore. Water was dripping off her, and her hair was all tangled.

"Where'd Wing go? I haven't seen him for ages," she said.

"Dunno," Max replied, going for the H.I.V. . She typed in "Wing" and found his dot over in the Alphas common room. On a hunch, she also put in "Raven", "Seth", and "Dekker". All appeared right around Wing's dot.

"He's in trouble?" Shelby asked, seeing the dot cluster. "Odd. He's usually the good-guy, if you know what I mean," she winked, drying off.

"Yeah," Max said dreamily, thinking back to one of the friends she'd had while on the run as Arch-Angel. It hadn't lasted long, but she at least had an idea of what love might be like for real; not the kind of suffering she'd endured with Otto. She hated mind games.

"Max," Shelby clicked her fingers in front of Max's face a few times, frowning.

"Huh? Sorry," Max apologised, coming out of her thoughts blushing.

"Let's just go save Wing," Shelby sighed.

"What about Otto?" Max asked, looking to where Otto had, forcibly, lost his trousers again.

"What about him?" Shelby said with a crooked smile.

-.-.-.-

Alphas common room

"I swear I did not knowingly cause an explosion, as the people around at the time can also, uhh, something along the lines of swear the same thing," Seth put a hand over his heart, trying to convince Dekker he hadn't deliberately blown up one of Raven's spare katana.

"And who was that?" Dekker asked, crossing her arms and tapping her foot. Seth had slipped up.

"Uhh, nobody. I meant _if there were people around at the time, _instead of whatever it was I said," Seth tried using a mind trick he'd learnt off the internet. If you make it sound hard to remember, and don't actually mention what it is that was hard to remember, they usually forgot.

"So you were on your own…"

"Yes,"

"Despite both yours and Miss Trinity's Blackbox signals coming from the same area at about the time you say the explosion happened?" Dekker supplied.

"You owe me a new katana," Raven said, tapping him on the shoulder.

Seth shrugged her off. "I'll see what I can do. But as I said, I didn't expect it to explode!"

Wing finally stepped in, "Perhaps you shouldn't be so hard on a new student? We want him to-"

"There you are!" Shelby rushed over to Wing and gave him a big wet smooch on the cheek. She hadn't dried her hair very well so it wrapped itself around Wing's face and he couldn't finish what he was going to say. He was also slightly distracted by the fact that Shelby was still wearing her neon pink bikini.

Max followed behind in her wetsuit, carrying a duffle bag with their uniforms in it.

"And what happened this time?" Max asked; folding her arms and tapping her foot in the exact same manner as the woman she was staring at.

Dekker stopped tapping her foot and turned to Raven. "I don't suppose there's any chance of ever getting to the end of this?"

"Probably not," Raven admitted. Well, Dekker wouldn't be the one to get to the end of it.

"You might want to check up on Otto and Laura, though," Max gave Dekker a cold smile, "she seems to have taken a liking to whatever devices are hidden beneath his swimming trunks," she said, watching as Dekker's face went from shocked to alarmed to the usual grizzly hate-glare as she strode towards the pools.

Raven was rather surprised at what Max had said, too. "Really?" she asked, incredulous.

"I dunno. Honestly I don't think there's anything impressive down there," Max winked.

Seth had slipped away a couple of moments after Shelby had shown up, slobbering all over Wing. Now he came back, his face soot-free and hair re-spiked.

"I don't think I want to know," he laughed, flopping down on a couch. "Sorry about the katana, Raven, I really didn't expect it to explode when I put the battery in the wrong way-"

"And what did you expect to happen?" Raven said, rolling her eyes.

"That's what I asked him!" Shelby cried, taking a small breather from Wing.

"Well I thought-" Seth started again, and then facepalmed the moment he saw Raven take a breath to speak. "I know, I know, remarkable event,"

"Damn straight!" Raven interrupted rudely.


	9. Chapter 9

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch9

_Bad Jokes and Evasive Pasts,_

-.-.-.-

In bed

Raven had loved his idea, once she got over the fact that Seth had destroyed one of her katana for it.

Seth put in the earphones and DJ Splash once again played in his ears. _New Life_.One of his favourites. Max and Laura slept below him, deciding to put their differences, and Otto's preferences, aside for as long as they were forced to be near each other.

Otto was having a really bad weekend. Dekker had thought Max had actually meant there were electronic devices illegal to H.I.V.E. hiding somewhere in his pants. Needless to say, he was very embarrassed at having to be searched.

Seth closed his eyes and thought back, back to when his life was seemingly normal…

_New Life…_

-.-.-.-

Next morning

Max's stuff had finally been returned to her, appearing at the foot of her bed. She'd been pretty happy about it.

"So what have you got in there?" Seth asked, flipping through the books on his desk. _Higher Villainy for Dummies_ was an interesting one. Seth had seen the _For Dummies _series before but he hadn't known that it included higher villainy.

"If nothings been taken…" Max searched through the bag, pulling everything out and dumping on her bed, "there should be the Secretary of Defence's laptop, Queens' pillow, night-vision goggles, the keys to a tank," she rattled off the list, taking them out of her bag as she said it.

"I know this is interesting stuff but we're going to be late for breakfast and we still need to stop by the library for your supplies," Laura interrupted, trying to get her hair reasonable. She looked like an insane person when her hair was like this. Max's looked fine or beautifully messy, as usual. It fell about her face as she trolled through her stuff. Seth's hair was short and just stayed spiked up. He could have bed hair, but you wouldn't be able to tell anyway, since he was a calm sleeper. It was one of those don't-roll-on-the-headphones instincts.

Seth chuckled at a sudden thought. "Early bird gets the-"

"Don't." Max stopped him abruptly. Using the "early bird" saying around her was not a good way to start the morning.

"Hot bacon?" he asked, unsure about why it was offensive. Max sighed and shook her head.

"Remember the _wings_?" Max whispered fiercely. "And don't even start about two birds with one stone," she warned, angry. Laura knew it wasn't such a good idea to make a genetically enhanced person angry. Otto had sort of missed that.

"Wasn't planning to. I just thought the early bird preferred bacon to worms- I mean spaghetti," he quickly amended. Seth picked up one of the many cell phones that littered the bed. "Agent Walker?" he said, reading the first text it had received since the day Max stole it. "From Head Office: we're trying to track Agent Smith's cell. It's not going well. Please make sure," Seth started laughing as he read the end of the text, "that your own doesn't go missing!"

"Really?" Laura peeked at the screen. "Well, it's a bit late," she said, returning to her impossible task.

"Can I keep this?" Seth asked Max, "It says Agent Walker," he smiled. His new identity was Seth Walker.

"Sure," Max said absentmindedly.

"Thanks. Looks like HIVEMind's disabled anything that could be used to track it though," Seth remarked. "Texts to Geneticist Batchelder…" Seth froze up. That couldn't be possible.

"Batchelder?" Max's head shot up, and she snatched the phone. "That bastard," she growled. "He was _with _the government… and the CIA approved?"

"What's got you guys riled up?" Laura asked, seeing how pale Seth's face had gone and the murderous rage that sat in Max's eyes.

Then the alarm went off.

"Whatever it is, we'll have to sort it out after classes," Laura said, pulling Max up and grabbing Seth. She shoved them both out the door and shut it behind them hurriedly. "We're going to be late for Stealth and Evasion at this rate!"

-.-.-.-

Stealth and Evasion

"What took you guys so long?" Shelby asked, seeing Laura's hair in a mess. They had been really late.

"Long story that still hasn't finished," Laura explained, rolling her eyes and shoving the other two into their seats.

Seth was distracted, thinking about what he had seen on the phone. _Geneticist Batchelder_. It couldn't be. It was impossible.

Max was thinking about the same thing. It had to be impossible. Nobody could have approved the School. It was inhumane, unreasonable; it went against everything people could consider decent.

"Well, now that everyone is here, we can start the lesson. I'd be surprised if everyone managed to get all their stationary…" Ms Leon drawled. Seth looked around and didn't see any teacher. _The cat_…

"The teacher's a cat?" he whispered to Shelby, who was sitting next to him. Shelby hid her grin and smiled. Ms Leon had excellent hearing.

"Yes, the teacher is a cat," Ms Leon said from right in front of Seth, startling him. He hadn't heard her moving. "Is there a problem with that?" she said sarcastically.

"No, no, not at all," Seth said, studying the collar around Ms Leon's neck. "Just wondering how. You're not a Mrs McGonagall impersonator, are you?"

"No. Ask Professor Pike about it later," she suggested. "Now, we'll need to find out just

how good the new students are at this before an appropriate learning plan can be sorted out," Ms Leon said, returning back to the front desk. "I already know how dreadful _you_ are, Master Walker, but we still have four other students to test."

And so they got tested. The Brazilian girl was an expert, Max was amazingly good, but she had a slight advantage. There was another boy that seemed to do just as well as Max, a tall dark kid with too-long black hair that reminded her a little bit of Wing. The last student to be tested was a student who looked like she'd rather be anywhere but there. She tripped almost every alarm and sentry on the course, despite doing her best to mimic Max and the boy.

"Can I have another try?" she asked Ms Leon, who thought she might be as bad as Seth. Ms Leon had actually revised her decision on Seth and decided he needed a go on the course too.

"After Seth," she agreed.

Seth looked at the course he was faced with. It was plain out "infiltrate the bank vault" for an extra-credit card. From observing the girl, he'd seen pressure plates, laser tripwires, security cameras, and a whole assortment of fake dangerous devices. The security cameras were so the class could watch his progress, and not actually part of the exercise.

"I'm screwed." He predicted.

He walked tentatively up to the security pad. He could see some of the numbers were slightly smudged, and from the directions of the smudges, he could guess the order they were pressed. Seth smiled. This might be easier than he thought.

9-2-5-7-4-3, he typed in. There was a beep and the lights turned on and the lasers turned off. _Security system deactivated_. Seth grinned and strolled in like he owned the place. The only problem now was the live sentries, which he nodded to as he walked past. They didn't notice anything threatening about the kid, or that he was going to steal whatever was hiding in the vault.

Their briefing had told them the boss hires new runners all the time. Fetchers for gold bars, that sort of thing.

Now, getting into the actual vault was a bit harder. The pad was a holographic digitalised one, meaning no smudged numbers. He tried the security code, and it came up negative. He put his thumb over the hologram emitter for a moment, hoping it would do something. It glitched and opened up the door.

-.-.-.-

"You have a stupid amount of luck, you know that?" Shelby groaned; facedesking.

"I might have done well but we still have no idea how stealthy I am," Seth replied, watching as the other girl tried to copy what he'd done. She did well too, but she'd also been terrible at actual stealth instead of trickery and deceiving, like Seth.

"Well, this concludes to two things," Ms Leon said after seeing the other girl finish with the card, "you two suck at stealth, but are good actors," she purred. "Maxine, Nicholas, and Sasha can actually follow instructions-"

"We had instructions?" Seth asked, confused.

"Yes. This was a test of _Stealth and Evasion_, meaning you were supposed to be stealthy and evade the guards if necessary." Ms Leon explained tiredly. "Since you did the opposite of that, I'll just have to mark you from what I saw in the weekend,"

The rest of the class was spent reviewing tactics and strategies for breaking into a bank.

Shelby's working was all about stealthily getting in and out with the loot and leaving behind a Wraith note.

Seth just bombed the place and went in with an argon laser cutter to open up the place like a tin can.

Laura hacked the system to show that she already had an account that contained almost all the money the bank had.

Otto did the same thing, but using his powers and a series of ATMs.

Wing's paper said Shelby would share with him, which Shelby admitted she probably would. Seth asked what they'd be naming their child and got whapped in the back of the head with Shelby's workbook.

Max was going to drive through with a tank and take whatever would fit in the back.

Nicholas would cut the power and shift in quietly without anybody noticing and take a backpack full of hundreds away with him.

Sasha would organise her gang to keep everyone at gunpoint while she grabbed the cash. She got slightly less marks because that's what always happens in the movies.

Nigel would ask his dad if he could borrow an assault Shroud and blast his way in.

Franz was going to make a withdrawal from the accounts of everyone he knew, and probably quite a few he didn't. But, being a super genius with financial things, he was going to do it untraceably.

The last girl was going to hire an expert, like Shelby, and give her, Wing, and their child, a little island in a pacific just for them.

"Guys," Shelby said, hands on hips, "I am NOT pregnant!"

"Just wait," the other girl giggled. Seth shoved Wing towards Shelby and started humming the wedding tune.

"What's your name again?" Max asked the other girl. "Oh, sorry," she quickly apologised, realising how blunt and rude she must have sounded.

"It's fine. I'm Jessica, although a lot of people call me Nudge for some reason," she said, and then went on about how cute a couple Shelby and Wing made for the next half an hour.  
When it was finally over, Max smiled and said, "I think it's because they need to keep nudging you so they can hear the teacher,"

Nudge smiled and blushed, her coffee coloured skin turning reddish. "So, call me a caffeine addict," she grinned.

"Max," Ms Leon said for the eighth time, "what should you do if a guard discovers you in a military base?"

Max gave an evil smile. She'd already done this example for real. "You kiss him and then uppercut to the chin while he's still thinking about what the hell you're up to," she snickered.

Ms Leon frowned. "Are you sure about that?" she asked, confused.

Max shrugged. "It works,"

-.-.-.-

Villainous studies

"We build a giant super laser on the fully manned space station because it's not about minimalism," Nero explained, twirling the laser pointer's dot around the animation of the space station floating high above the earth. "It's all about style, finesse, and making it look good. Or bad, depending on how you think about it,"

"Be badass or bland," Seth supplied, liking the idea of a giant super laser waiting for him in orbit.

"Exactly," Nero agreed, bringing up a picture of Max, covered in stolen jewellery and waving to the crowds of police and reporters below her on the streets surrounding Buckingham Palace. It was a freeze frame, right before the sniper had taken a shot. "Maxine Ride and Shelby Trinity know this," he said, pulling up a newspaper image of a note left on a museum podium, signed by The Wraith. "However I can say that Maxine can go a little bit too far at times," Nero sighed, loading the footage of the recent tank stealing.

"I shall note that explaining to people that tanks smell like old socks is a bad idea," Max nodded, writing something in her class journal. Nero shook his head, knowing he was going to be hard-pressed to get the right idea across to them.

"Anyhow, I have reviewed your strategies for robbing the bank, and I must say I am disappointed in a few of your points. But some are understandable, as we must tread the fine line of getting what we want and making it look good, but we don't want the world's governments and other agencies pausing whatever else they are doing and focusing on getting rid of us."

"Like me?" Seth asked, flicking through his _Be Careful of What you Steal _guide, which labelled the pyramids in Egypt a stupid goal.

Nero thought for a moment. "I don't think so, as you're relatively new to the criminal world and in a different way, but you did attract a lot of attention," he admitted. "Now, Diabolus Darkdoom was a prime example of hitting the line and staying there. Everything he did was pulled off perfectly," Nero went on about Nigel's father for ages, pointing out all the highlights and the few lowlights of his career.

Max held up a hand.

"Yes, Maxine?" Nero gestured for her to ask her question.

"Please, call me Max. But, umm, is stealing tanks like that still allowed?" she chewed on the end of her pencil.

"I think that might be a one-time escapade, Max," Nero said, bringing up the fine-line-of-disaster on the big screen again. "If you do it too many times, they're likely to just set up an airstrike on you while you're on the road with the tank. Once you get enough friends and contacts in your circle of evil, you can get your own tanks manufactured anyway. Most will be designed better than anything the U.S. Military could offer you, especially if the engineers were H.I.V.E. graduates,"

"What about nuking?" Seth asked, twiddling his pencil around in his hand.

"Out of the question. Nuking people is a bad idea," Nero shook his head. "If you do that, the world will be thrown into chaos and wars will start, etc," he pulled up a picture of a fist smashing down on a wireframe earth. "G.L.O.V.E. is the Global League of Villainous Enterprises, and is designed to keep villains in check; make sure that they don't do anything that serious. After all, there's no point in striving to take over the world if there's nothing left to take over."

"So we get to be evil, but we have to follow all the rules," Seth wrote something in his book, and returned to leaning back lazily and playing around with the pencil.

"G.L.O.V.E. is for stopping one villain from achieving total power. If it does get to something like that, like with Overlord, we become the good guys and try to take him out so we still have the world to terrorise. Being the tech savvy person you are, I assume you are familiar with the "Grey-Goo" incident?" Nero asked.

Seth nodded. "Self-replicating nanobots eating everything and everyone, turning the world into a big glob of grey goo. Or there's the brain explosion theory,"

Nero folded his arms and rubbed his forehead. "The nanobot one. Overlord tried to unleash that upon the world, and that's one of the few times G.L.O.V.E. has authorised a nuclear strike."

"Did it work?" Seth asked, rather alarmed that the Grey-Goo Incident had almost been a reality. "Because if there was even one nanobot left, the world could still be in danger,"

"The EMP thrown out by the nuke would have been enough to corrupt their programming. But all were destroyed anyway." Nero assured him.

"That's a relief," Seth sighed, taking note in his journal. "Only nuke if there happens to be an unstoppable force to take over the world standing in your way…" he read. Satisfied, he looked back up to Nero.

"Next, we shall discuss the benefits of not being a law abiding citizen…"

-.-.-.-

Lunch hall

Seth, Laura, and Max were starving, since they'd missed breakfast. Nicholas and Jessica, who kept trying to remind them to call her Nudge, also had one hell of an appetite.

"What's next?" Max asked, digging into a club sandwich. Tomato, lettuce, ham, cheese, mayo, saladstuffs, it was a big sandwich.

"Grappling for Beginners with Colonel Francisco and then we end the day with Professor Pike in science and technology," Shelby reported, chowing down on some sushi.

"Sharks in the pool," Seth snickered, having a large bowl of fried rice. Wing and Nudge were enjoying their own fried rice too.

"There's sharks?!" Nudge cried, alarmed. Rice went flying as she spluttered out more words. "Are we gonna fall in and get eaten?!"

"There aren't any sharks," Otto said. He was having fish and chips, and kept making bad jokes about them, like the Lock Ness Monster eating fish and ships. His black eyes were stating to show less, which was a relief.

Laura was getting whiplash from her spaghetti a lot. "There are eels though," she said, "I don't know how they got there, but I don't think the Colonel put them there,"

"Slimy buggers," Seth cringed. "Smoked eel tastes pretty good, though,"


	10. Chapter 10

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch10

_Daring Disasters and New Friends,_

-.-.-.-

Grappler Cavern

"So this is what he meant," Max said, getting some instructions from Shelby. The Colonel had swung off like a big ape in military fatigues after telling them what to do. But he'd deliberately done it vaguely to see how much teamwork the veteran students were prepared for.

"Yeah, press this button- POINT IT SOMEWHERE ELSE!" Shelby shrieked; dodging as Max accidentally launched the grappler hook at her.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry!" she said quickly, putting her hands over her mouth.

"Look, press this button to retract, and then point it somewhere else when you want to fire it. When you're ready, press this one to switch it to the triggers," Shelby said, pointing to each one in turn.

"OK, I think I've got it now," Max pointed it away at the roof and set it to triggers. She pulled the pointer trigger and the grappler shot the hook, trailing microfilament. As it hit the roof, Max pulled the middle trigger and it retracted quickly, taking her off her feet. "Hey!" she yelled, surprised.

Seth looked up and saw Max dangling from a stalactite. He gave her a thumbs-up.

"Not helping!" she yelled back at him. Shelby checked the equipment rack and found what Max needed; her other grappler.

"I think you forgot something!" Shelby yelled, holding up the other grappler. She quickly strapped it to her leg and took a running jump off the platform. Before she disappeared, she fired the grappler and swung around up to where Max was hanging helplessly. "Here you go," Shelby passed the grappler that had been on her leg down to Max, who quickly fitted it on and accidentally shot it at Seth.

"Now who's not helping!" he yelled, dodging as the hook tried to impale itself in his foot.

"Sorry!"

Seth shook his head and fired his grappler up at the ceiling. Once stuck, he reeled himself up and flipped himself upside-down, and landed on the roof as though it were the floor. His grin looked like a weird frown to Shelby, who was still right-way-up.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Francisco bellowed from the other side of the chamber, putting his own grapplers back on.

"Being sneaky!" Seth yelled back happily. He fired the other grappler forward and it struck the rocks a few meters away. Then he reeled it in and let the other one slack as he walked across the roof. He couldn't get a second grappler shot to continue skywalking. As soon as he released the first shot and walked past the second, the hook's angle had made it impossible to support his weight, and he fell towards the eel infested pool.

"Seth!" Max cried, ready to drop down and fly him to safety.

"Ahhh!" he screamed, falling. He hated water. Seth tried flipping in mid air and firing the grappler at the roof, but it didn't make it time.

He hit the water with a big splash, right next to a large rock. Bubbles swirled around him as he cried out in pain, losing his breath and sucking in water. He was choking immediately, his body fighting for air that wasn't there. _So this is how it ends… _he thought, his body starting to shut down. He stopped fighting to get to the surface, his movements getting weaker and even more ineffective.

Drowning.

_Such a horrible way to go…_

-.-.-.-

"He's gonna be OK, isn't he?" Shelby asked, worried for her friend. Wing was beside her, comforting her. Nobody knew what to expect when Seth hadn't come back up. Max had dived down, grabbed his unconscious body and had flown the downed Alpha up to the platform Francisco was waiting on. HIVEMind had made sure the others were sworn to secrecy about it. Any leaking information about the wings would come with a severe punishment.

Everyone had been worried about him.

"We're not sure," one of the doctors replied. "He inhaled a lot of water,"

Max was sitting solemnly next to the door. She could have saved Seth before he'd hit the water, and the rocks below. She felt terrible about it. _Now who's not helping! _His last words to her.

"Come on, guys, there's nothing else we can do here," Otto lead them out. Max stayed behind for a moment, thinking.

_If only I was an Angel…_

-.-.-.-

Science class

"And we seem to be missing a student," Professor Pike said, noticing an empty seat next to a rather upset Max. He noticed then how demoralised some of the others looked. "But we can worry about that later," he amended. "For now, though, we need to test the new students' abilities,"

Another thing Max didn't want to be reminded about: the chip in her arm. Her hand moved to it unconsciously. The Professor handed out unfinished blueprints for some kind of super laser, and returned to work on something on his desk.

The laser had a lot of confusing symbols on it that made no sense to Max, even when she read through the key. Otto and Laura finished theirs in record time, spending the rest of the lesson working on some other project Pike had given them.  
She was still worried about Seth; too worried to properly focus on anything else. Shelby started chatting with Nudge about something, and neither of them got any work done, but it distracted Max a little. Laura and Otto were busy discussing the applications of nanotechnology in building extremely fine computer cores, and started going on about what to use to build an impact resistant energy shield.

"Hey, need any help?" a voice said behind her. Max spun in her seat to see Nicholas politely asking if he could sit next to her.

"I suppose so. I can't figure out any of it right now," Max said, returning fruitlessly to the blueprints as Nicholas sat down beside her. "Nicholas, right?"

"Call me Fang," he grinned, and Max could see why. He had real vampire-like fangs.

"So, _Fang_, got any idea on how this thing should work?" Max gave him a lopsided smile.

"Nope. But we could always just do this," he copied some of the symbols below the drawing and added them to the circuit randomly; some of them in places that the instructions said had been completed already. Max giggled and did the same, avoiding everywhere they should have been, putting symbols in the completed areas and completely avoiding where she should have been working.

"And now, to finish the trail," she said, sticking her tongue out and drawing a single line to complete the circuit.

The Brazilian girl, Sasha, looked completely lost. "Can I just-"

"No," Pike answered automatically, not looking up from his work.

"If it's any consolation, I suck at this too," Shelby whispered to her, leaning back, head upside-down.

"Remember what happened to the last person who was upside-down?" Sasha reminded her bluntly, tapping her pencil on her forehead.

"Uhh," Shelby started to fall backwards, having leant too far in her seat. "No?"

She hit the floor with a crash.

-.-.-.-

After classes

Max decided she liked N-Fang. Fang. But she couldn't have been more torn between being guilty about not being able to save Seth and guilty that she was having a great time, at the _pools_, with Fang, while he was recovering, or maybe dying.

There wasn't a pool party today, but they were allowed pool-volleyball.

"Heads up Max!" Otto yelled, seeing the ball flying towards her. She headbutted it into the air and dived down to the other side. Shelby was about to hit it back to her friend, but Max started tickling her feet and the ball hit her on the head. It was one of those hard plastic balls that had a real bounce to them, and it bounced off the back of Shelby's head and hit Nudge in the face.  
"Owww!" Nudge moaned, holding her nose.

"Stop it! That's cheating!" Shelby cried, pushing Max away once she came up for air. Max laughed and swam back her side, backstroking.

"Incoming!" Laura screamed, pointing at something coming from the diving boards. That same inflatable shark flew towards them, chucked downwards by Franz.

"Hah, I can be beating your tiny splash, Mr Sharkykins!" he yelled, jumping into the air above them.

"What's the chance he'll hit the net?" Nigel sighed and shaded his eyes, looking up at Franz's downfall. Shelby dived under, and the others started racing for the pool edge. Nigel grabbed the ball and chucked it basketball style in Franz's way. Franz, now rushing towards the pool extremely fast with his legs flailing, accidentally kicked the ball into the back of Max's fleeing head.

She saw stars, and her body didn't seem to want to work properly anymore. She couldn't think straight, and didn't feel herself get picked up and chucked away by the Franz Tide. Her mind didn't register where she was until she'd been lying on Nicholas- Fang's abs for a whole minute. And even when it did, she didn't feel like moving. Max just lay there with him, resting her head on his chest.

"Max?" came a fuzzy and indistinct voice. She tried to look up at Fang's face, but all she achieved was a weak push like she was trying to look left. Her right leg was tangled within Fang's.

"Max?" the voice came slightly clearer this time. She could almost swear it was coming from next to her. "Are you OK?" Max felt slightly OK. She didn't feel anything, to be honest. She tried to open her eyes, but barely managed a flicker.

"Oh, jeez, we're having a really bad day with water, aren't we?" came a second voice. It sounded like… like… Max gave up. She couldn't tell. She just wanted to sleep…

Someone picked her up, and Max tried standing through instinct. She must have looked like a sleepwalker… Walker…

"MAX!" the voice came clearly this time, right in front of her. She scrunched her face up and tried to push it away, her eyes barely open. Her arm didn't get very far, and she forgot to keep standing. "Max, wake up!" Fang caught her before she could fall over. Max didn't want to wake up. She was fine like this, without the memories… without the pain, the guilt… without her friends… her loves…

"Is she breathing?" another voice asked. Max was too tired to attach it to a name… a face…

"I think so," Fang… said. She could feel her breath hitting his… something… could she go to sleep now? She was so tired…

_What… why can't you leave me… _

-/-/-/-

Shelby looked at Max, who was lying on Nicholas. Normally, Shelby would have giggled at a sight like this, but she'd seen the way Max had just stopped moving after Franz had kicked their surrogate volleyball, and was more concerned that they might have another person to drop off to the sick bay.

"Max, could you get off me?" Nicholas laughed, delighted at having her there while he was only wearing board shorts. He thought it was pity Max wasn't wearing a bikini like Shelby. He almost looked exactly like Wing, only not Asian. Max didn't respond. She didn't move at all.

"Max?" he tried again. Max moved slightly. Her head rose a little, but immediately fell back down. The others were still laughing and sharing experiences they'd had with the Franz Tide. Only Shelby and Nicholas knew about- no, even they didn't know what kind of condition Max was in. It wasn't good, either way. "Are you OK?" Nicholas asked, confused. Her eyes flickered open, but then stopped and stayed closed. She made a small noise.

"Oh, jeez, we're having a really bad day with water, aren't we?" Shelby said, crouching down to feel the back of Max's head. "Oh yeah, she's going to have one hell of a bump," she sighed. "Let's get her off of you,"

Nicholas nodded and tried to get Max off him without grabbing anything inappropriate for acquaintances to be grabbing. Shelby grabbed Max and pulled her up under her shoulders. Max, for one hope-inducing moment, actually managed to stand up. She started swaying to the side a little, then a lot, and Shelby propped her up.

"MAX!" Nicholas shouted in her face, trying to get her to wake up. Max moaned and raised her arm in a feeble attempt to push him away, but in doing so she slipped off Shelby and fell into Nicolas's waiting arms. Her eyes were barely even half open, staring into nothing. "Max, wake up!"

"Is she breathing?" Nigel asked, suddenly realising that chucking the ball at Franz might not have been such a good idea.

Nicolas leant down and put his ear to Max's mouth. He could feel her breath tingling through his too-long black hair. "I think so," he said.

"Do we need to get her to the sick bay?" Nigel asked. Shelby just cried.

"Where is it?" Nicholas asked, picking up Max bridal-style. Nigel pulled him along and they left Shelby to explain to the others what had happened.

-.-.-.-

Shelby's new bunk room

Shelby didn't want to be with anyone for a while, and she knew that Seth and Max weren't coming back from the sick bay for a while, so she'd swapped with Laura. Otto was fine with it, and Laura didn't feel like getting revenge anymore.

Max was suffering from concussion, and slight spinal displacement in her neck. The messages weren't getting from her brain to her muscles properly. It had been fixed with some light surgery, but she needed to rest and recover. The doctors were still trying to clear out Seth's lungs, so he wasn't coming back either.

Shelby was alone. She took a long hot shower to rinse off the day's horrific events. As she stood under the water, she had a sudden crazy thought. Why was she in the shower with nobody else in the bunk room? Considering all the accidents that had happened today, perhaps getting wet again wasn't a good idea.

She sighed and hopped out, not wanting to risk it. Her body was tired, but her mind needed something to distract itself. Drying herself off, she got into her pyjamas and looked around the small room. There wasn't much she could use if she wanted to get to sleep. Looking up on the shelf that served as a bedside table for whoever had the topside bunk, Shelby found the iPod that Seth had shown her, back on the day they met. _So it hadn't fallen in the pool with him, _she thought.

Shelby snuck under the covers of her new bed, put the earphones in, and pressed play. She looked at the screen and smiled as she saw the name of the next song. _God Is A Girl_.


	11. Chapter 11

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch11

_Shelby pops the question, and Seth gets a surprise,_

-.-.-.-

Shelby woke suddenly. She'd dreamed she was stuck in a digital world, like in the movie Tron. It took her a moment, but she realized she was still listening to Seth's iPod, stuck on the DJ Splash folder. She must have rolled on the repeat button.

_Norwegian Rebel _was playing in her ears. She loved it. This had to be the first time in ages that she'd actually heard _music_ since arriving at H.I.V.E.

"_No-one can stop us now!_"

Shelby totally felt like she agreed. She was really pumped up, despite only having just woken up. She started dancing around, swinging her body to the techno, nodding her head to the beat.

"_No-one can stop us now!_"

She danced and danced and flicked her head around. Next up came _Energise_, which wasn't what had come up last time. Seth had left it on random. She didn't care; she had music to listen to.

"Well, glad to see you're awake, at least," Laura yawned from the doorway.

Shelby spun over and whispered in her ear, "No-one can stop us now!" and twirled around the room, eventually tripping up on one of the beds.

"Oh, you've re-discovered music," Laura saw the black wires trailing from Shelby's ears. Her voice was slightly drowned out by _Come Into My Life_.

"What?" Shelby asked loudly, trying to speak over the music only she could hear, still wiggling to the beat, sitting on the bed. Laura just shook her head and pulled out the mini speaker systems.

"We still have classes today!" she loudly reminded Shelby, who winced.

"Not until after lunch though, right?" Shelby asked, reaching for the earphones. Laura sighed and handed them back.

"We've still got to have breakfast and study for the exams," Laura said. Shelby didn't really want to bother with the exams. Studying… even the thought of it made her want to fall asleep again. She was about to put the earphones back in when she thought about who they belonged to.

"Any news on Seth and Max?" she asked, concerned.

"They might be getting released later, in between the first and second class periods. But Max is going to be _really _tired." Laura told her. Shelby nodded and put the speakers back in her ears. _Revolution_ was playing. She danced her way to the bathroom to brush her teeth and do other things while Laura went back to her room.

Each song passed and a new one started before Shelby realised it was over. It was glorious. She quickly got into her uniform and stuck her Blackbox in one pocket and the iPod in the other. She decided that she might keep the earphones hidden until she was at the library "studying". It was a real shame that Nero didn't let them put music on their Blackboxes…

But then again, she'd never asked.

-/-/-/-

To: HIVEMind

From: Shelby Trinity

_Hypothetical question for you: if we were able to get a hold of music, could we put it on our Blackboxes? And would you guys supply head/earphones for us?_

-/-/-/-

To: Shelby Trinity

From: HIVEMind

_O_O_

-/-/-/-

To: Shelby Trinity

From: Nero

_Please refrain from using the word "Hypothetical" around HIVEMind_

-/-/-/-

To: Nero

From: Shelby Trinity

Forwarded (HIVEMind): _Hypothetical question for you: if we were able to get a hold of music, could we put it on our Blackboxes? And would you guys supply head/earphones for us?_

-/-/-/-

To: Shelby Trinity  
From: Nero

_I'm surprised that nobody has ever bothered asking that. Of course, but how would you get the music?_

-/-/-/-

To: Nero

From: Shelby Trinity

_You guys have a copy of the internet in storage, right? That also means a copy of every YouTube music video _:)

-/-/-/-

To: Shelby Trinity  
From: Nero

_I suppose so…_

-/-/-/-

To: Nero

From: Shelby Trinity

_OMG THANK YOU! U R THE BST TEACHA EVA!_

-/-/-/-

Shelby paused before hitting send. Then she added a Z to the OMG.

"_No-one can stop us now!"_

-.-.-.-

Sick Bay

"Heh, I've changed the world already," Seth laughed weakly, seeing the message that just appeared on his third, or was it fourth, Blackbox. He guessed he was on the Blackbox Blacklist over at stationary supply.

Max just sighed and rolled over away from him, but then froze in pain as something in her neck clicked. Max just rolled back to where she was before, facing the ceiling. "So what could you have possibly done from here?" Max asked tiredly. Her body was extremely worn out, but her mind was, unfortunately, as bright as ever.

"Have a look," Seth tried to pass over the Blackbox, but Max stopped him.

"Does it look like I can read it from here?" Max exasperated, annoyed.

"Ahhh, no." Seth lay back and simply read it out for her. "_YouTube music videos are now an available resource for students if they wish to have music while they study. Earphones and headphones are available from the stationary storage area next to the library._ From HIVEMind to everyone," Seth read. "I think someone found my iPod,"

"You had an iPod with you?" Max asked the ceiling.

"No, of course not," Seth said in a different voice, pretending to be the ceiling, using the _Action Hero _voice. "However that handsome devil lying in the bed next to you does,"

"You're a ceiling," Max pointed out. "Your version of handsome probably consists of bland, unordinary, and water-proof!"

"That's hurtful," Seth started coughing, and the fit lasted for what felt like forever. When he was done, he fell back down onto the bed, drained. "That ceiling hates you now," he croaked, still trying to make light of it.

"And why might that be?" Max said sarcastically.

"Because you're not bland, unordinary, and water-proof," he grinned.

"Well that makes two of us," Max laughed. "You really are _smooth with the ladies,_" she imitated the tone he'd used when he'd said it.

"I'm in trouble now aren't I," Seth said with a depreciating smile.

"Oh, yes, just as soon as I can throttle you without breaking my own neck, I will," Max grinned evilly.

Seth, unfazed, brought up the thing they'd both been so shocked about yesterday morning, a time that felt like it was several eternities ago. "Remember that text? From Agent Walker to Geneticist Batchelder?"

"Yes," Max shifted moods entirely. Batchelder had brought her to miserable life in the School.

"I think he was my dad," Seth said, still rather shocked at the thought of it.

"Then…" Max frowned, "we might be siblings. Was your father Jeb Batchelder?"

"Yeah. My mother was Marian Batchelder." Seth told her.

"Half-siblings then," Max amended.

"But how?!"

"Half my genetic material came from Jeb Batchelder, half of it from a human egg donated to "science" and a little input from the Avian spectrum." Max explained.

Seth still thought this was impossible. "But dad died when I was a kid! He drowned!"

Max thought about it for a moment. "More than likely it was a fake death. However he actually _did _die when I escaped the School. The School was the genetic research facility where I was bor- I mean engineered,"

"Oh. So… you're my sister…" Seth paled.

"Yeah, real smooth with the ladies,"

-.-.-.-

Fang Martinez and his sister, Jessica Martinez, had been given their own bunkroom, but didn't have any of the veteran students bunking with them. Jessica was still pestering him to call her Nudge. Fang himself had dark skin, but he wasn't African-American like Nudge. They were family only because they had been adopted when they were kids. Nudge was actually a fair bit younger than Fang, but got to bunk with him because of the whole family thing.

"We aren't actually going to be studying, are we?" Nudge asked, flicking through the new resources available to them on the computer. "I mean, we wouldn't even have a clue of what to be looking for anyway,"

Fang just nodded silently, then cringed when he remembered Nudge hated that almost as much as him calling her Jessica. "Yeah. We might as well just grab some music instead,"

"What are you looking for?" she asked.

Fang didn't really know. "No idea. Possibly something with a good beat."

"No duh! You can be so vague sometimes. I think I'll grab something like Taylor Swift, maybe Justin-"

"Don't mention his name!" Fang quickly interrupted his adoptive sister. "H.I.V.E. hasn't been spoiled by him yet, and I think it should stay that way,"

"Be… yah, maybe not. Are you gonna grab some dubstep or some crap like that?" Nudge asked, quickly deleting the last four songs she'd converted.

"Could you imagine me listening to dubstep?"

"No. But then again I can see you doing the soulja boy. Maybe you'd like rock, or goth stuff, or emo-"

"Please, stop," Fang moaned, swinging around on his chair and pushing the heels of his palms into his eyes. "I'll tell you what I've got later, when I actually have it!"

And he tried to ignore Nudge, fruitlessly, for the next hour as she went on and on and on and on and on and on…

-.-.-.-

All over H.I.V.E., students of all ages abandoned their studies. There were very few who didn't like the notion of music. Aside from the goons in the Henchman stream with the broken Blackboxes, almost everyone wanted to listen to the sounds of imagination.

"Do you think HIVEMind would like techno?" Seth asked Max. They'd decided to leave the attempts at hitting on each other out of their lives for now. They liked each other a lot, but now they knew it had simply been blood instinct to love your family, and nothing else.

"Huh?"

"You know, techno music?" Seth was appalled. How could she not know?

"Uhh, no, but it sounds like he might like it." Max replied, sitting up.

"My god, you really have been missing out," Seth told her. He checked with HIVEMind to see if Laura was still their roommate, but he wasn't entirely sure Laura would have set something like this off. "Oh, looks like we've got Shelby in our room,"

"That's nice. I don't _like_ like Otto anymore."

-/-/-/-

To: Shelby Trinity

From: Seth Walker

_You kicked this off, didn't you?_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Shelby Trinity

_I have no idea what you're talking about _:)

-/-/-/-

To: Shelby Trinity

From: Seth Walker

_Can I have my iPod back? Max doesn't know what techno is_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Shelby Trinity

_OMG! For real?!_

-/-/-/-

To: Shelby Trinity

From: Seth Walker

_Telling us we're allowed out now. Meet us by stationary_

-.-.-.-

Shelby grinned and finished copying and pasting the music files from Seth's iPod to her Blackbox. She could have had a look at the CIA folder, but she was worried about what she might find. So she didn't open it.

H.I.V.E. was buzzing. It was like music could truly change everything here. Shelby walked past smiling Alphas who were discussing the good things about each type of music. Techno, rock, alt, pop, Gangnam Style, there was heaps going around.

She worked her way to the stationary storage areas, passing by Block and Tackle without incident. Well, they did start fighting each other when Tackle said something about Beyonce. Shelby told them both they were idiots who shouldn't be wasting their brain cells like this, and they turned on her. Shelby ran around the corner and straight into Raven.

"Hi Raven!" Shelby shouted gleefully, before twisting away from her. "Oh, did you know that Tackle loves Beyonce?"

Raven blinked. Then, as Shelby continued to rush away, she thought about what she'd said to her. Tackle and Beyonce, together? That thought would warm Raven's mood for years to come. It was just too funny to contemplate.

-.-.-.-

"Hey guys," Shelby greeted Max and Seth just as they'd received their headsets. Seth had a couple of sets of headphones wrapped around his arm and two sets of earbuds in his hand. He was a bit paler than usual, but he was doing better than when Shelby last saw him.

"Hey," Seth smiled, "good work. You've started a H.I.V.E. changing experience for everyone!"

"I know, isn't this awesome?!" Shelby clapped a high-five with Seth's free hand. "But seriously, I'm really glad to see you guys are OK,"

"We sorta discovered something else while we were stuck in sick bay," Max looked uncomfortable, and was holding her left forearm lightly. "We can talk about it when we get back to our room," she said, stemming the flow of questions ready to flow from Shelby's mouth.

"Trust me, this one's big," Seth grinned like an idiot. "Even bigger than some of the CIA's secrets,"

"Really?" Shelby was once again sceptical, hand on hip.

"No."


	12. Chapter 12

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch12

_To text, steal, annoy, or not to text, steal, and annoy is a stupid question indeed,_

-.-.-.-

"The CIA knows the eleven secret herbs and spices of KFC?!"

"Yeah, ****** ****** ******* ******* ***** **** ****** *********** **** *********** ****** ***** *** *****," Seth explained.

"Do you think we could get the cafeteria staff to do that?" Shelby asked. Max looked a little green at the thought of eating a fellow bird, but not that green.

"I dunno. We're all evil here so it might go public before we get the chance," Seth replied, lying down on his top-bunk bed. "But then again, someone from Politics and Finance would probably blackmail them first."

"More than likely. Except for Franz," Max said thoughtfully, sitting on the edge of her bunk.

"Yeah, he'd probably have personal chefs serving it to him 24/7!" Seth laughed, imagining Franz the size of a house and eating KFC by the truckload.

"Please, don't scar my imagination," Shelby giggled, while Max went even paler.

"We'd probably find gold by digging into his bellybutton, or maybe even diamonds! They form under extreme pressure, and when Franz is as big as a house, I don't know where else we'd find them!" Seth was holding his sides, trying not to hurt himself again so soon. Shelby wasn't even bothering, she was laughing too hard.

Max went very pale, and rushed into the bathroom with one hand over her stomach and the other over her mouth.

"I think we grossed her out," Shelby chortled, hearing the sounds of someone puking coming from the bathroom. "Hey, what was it you guys found out in the sick bay?"

"Oh, we're half-siblings," Seth told her. He looked down to see her on her bed, across the room. Max slept underneath Seth's bed. Shelby looked like she was going to faint again. "Same father, different mother."

"So who were you, really?" Shelby asked, suddenly quiet.

Seth sighed. It was time to come clean about who he was. He just wasn't sure about how to go about it. Where to start? Maybe his family. "You want to know everything?"

Shelby nodded.

"Well, my name was Orion Batchelder. Don't ask. I don't know what my parents were thinking either. Everyone called me "Riot" instead. My dad, Jeb, was a geneticist. He was always going on about it before he drowned when I was a kid. I think I was six. But Max told me it was a fake death, that he'd "moved to work" or something." He explained. "But after that, way after that, I sorta got involved with a gang,"

"Oh, boy," Shelby put her hand over her eyes and shook her head. "Not the best idea, was it?"

"Not really, but it was where I learnt to fight. Same place I got my knife," he said. "Then I must have done something wrong, because they started to come after me as well as police once I got into the fight with those bullies. Then I erased myself from all electronic systems and became Seth Walker, H.I.V.E. Student,"

"Quite a history," Shelby nodded, thinking. "What's Max's side of it?"

The puking seemed to stop for a moment.

"I don't know yet, she's still sorta sensitive about the whole _wings _part of it," Seth whispered.

"I suppose so… how on earth did she get them, anyway?" Shelby asked. She was very interested in the wings. A human that could fly. Amazing. She, like most others, dreamed of being able to fly through the clouds, over cities, diving at a bazillion miles an hour.

"She'll tell us when she's ready. In the mean time, we have to use our imagination," Seth grinned like an idiot. Shelby sighed. She wanted wings too.

"Maybe she really is an angel?" Shelby hypothesized.

"Maybe," Seth agreed.

-.-.-.-

"Let's try this again," Ms Leon sighed, shaking her fluffy white head. She'd gotten The Maze changed around a bit so that there wouldn't be any keypads to read and cheat with.

The first pair of students to tackle the course, Seth and Nudge, were really starting to regret their fantastical acting skills.

"So will you two be working together, or competing?"

Seth looked at Nudge, knowing failure was almost guaranteed either way. "Compete?"

Nudge knew they were both terrible, and together they were likely to be twice as bad, if not worse. "Might at well," she nodded, chewing her bottom lip nervously.

"Well what are you waiting for?! GO!" Ms Leon shouted, pointing a paw at the Maze entrance.

"Here goes… uhh… everything." Seth walked forward cautiously. He had no idea what to expect. Nudge, who was kind of ignoring the decision she'd just made to compete with him, followed closely behind, but didn't get in Seth's way.

Seth quickly examined all the walls and floors for any possible traps, tripwires, or… stuff. He saw none along the polished steel walls, and made his way down the halls. They seemed endless, and after five minutes wandering around lost, he supposed that part of the Maze was actually a maze. Hearing footsteps behind him, he turned to face Nudge, but saw nothing.

"Wha-" something brutally punched him in the stomach. Camouflaged guards, eh? Seth strained to get his breath back. It took him a lot longer than he was comfortable with after his recent incident. He reeled back, trying to get away from his unseen enemy.

More footsteps.

Whoever they were, they were relying on lack of visible target. But Seth, devious as ever, simply listened. As soon as the footsteps were close enough, he flung his arm out and twisted around, doing a full 360 spin before his fist crashed down on the back of someone's head. He'd felt the wind rush past his back as he'd twisted. They'd expected resistance, and so had followed the punch forward and down to the floor.

"Not your best day." Seth grunted as he stomped on the floor where the invisible attacker lay. He felt the blow connect solidly against some kind of electronic device, as the man became visible a moment later. Seth elbowed the man in the back of his neck when he tried to get up. "Stay down,"

The man complied. Well, he was unconscious so it wasn't like he knew he was obeying orders.

"Hey Nudge!" Seth yelled down the corridors, wondering where his competitor went. He got no reply. Scratching the back of his head, he looked around to try and figure out where the hell he'd come in from.

He decided to go forward, then left, then right, and then hit a dead end. Or was it?

Nope. It was a dead end.

"I hate mazes," Seth muttered angrily under his breath, turning around. Then he got a surprise. "Uhh, Max, what are you doing here?"  
"Nudge fell into a water trap and then we realised that Ms Leon probably didn't know about your accident, so me and Fang got to go and whoever caught you gets bonus points!" Max smiled, grabbing his arm and dragging him through the maze in the Maze.

"I hate water," Seth muttered, running behind his sister. "You guys competing or working together?"

"We… don't really know."

"Competing then."

"You don't like him, do you?" Max asked, stopping suddenly, seemingly angry.

"I barely know him," Seth replied bluntly. "Right now, I simply don't trust most people that I don't know. So what the hell were we doing in the Maze in the first place?!"

"We… don't really know that either…" Max's shoulders slumped.

"Let's just find our way out and ask," Seth shook his head, looking down more corridors, hallways, and other things that he sincerely doubted they'd approach when not at H.I.V.E.

Max sighed.

-.-.-.-

"We're all glad you made it out alive," Ms Leon started before being interrupted by Shelby.

"WHAT THE HELL TOOK YOU GUYS SO LONG?!" she shouted at them, highly aggrieved.

Seth let Max do the talking.

"I had to drag him along too," Max said, jerking a thumb at Seth.

Seth decided to do the talking next time.

"Yeah, I get that," Shelby said, knowing firsthand what it was like to try drag Seth along on something requiring stealth. "But FOUR HOURS?!"

"So… where'd the others go?" Seth asked, looking around the classroom.

"Dinner, slowpoke." Shelby shot a duh look at him.

"I amend. We're glad you made it out before we all died of old age," Ms Leon said dryly, flicking her tail. "Seth, you have to be one of the most dreadful students I have had since Franz showed up. I would give you special tutoring to try and sort this out, but I doubt it would help, coming from me." She said. Shelby groaned. If special tutoring from Ms Leon wasn't even worth considering, he must truly be a hopeless cause. "Which is why I'm going to be handing you over to Miss Trinity."

"WHAT?!" Shelby leapt out of her seat, shocked. "What can I teach him?! You're the Stealth and Evasion _master_!"

Seth looked rather uncomfortable too. "I can't really be _that _bad, can I?"

"You can and you are, Master Walker," Ms Leon replied, ignoring Shelby's outburst. "I truly wonder how I haven't gotten a letter from the librarian yet,"

"H.I.V.E. has a library?"

Ms Leon blinked. "Oh. Well, that explains it. Anyway, I think that with the help of two highly infamous thieves, the Arch-Angel and the Wraith, you should be in quite capable hands."

"No offence to either of you girls," Seth started, looking at each of them like they might kill him for this, "but I-"

"Don't even say it," Max said, finger in the air and head tilted to the side. "Don't. Even. Say it."

Shelby started pacing around her desk, trying to pull out her hair in large chunks. "How the hell are we supposed to teach him?! We don't have access to anything like the Maze, he's damn hopeless, and like you said in the weekend, New Mexico probably knows he's hopeless!"

"Where's New Mexico again?" Seth asked, confused.

"Nowhere near here!" Shelby exclaimed, pacing even more.

Ms Leon watched with amusement. "We could always see if Raven has any spare time to give him some tips," she smiled. Shelby groaned even louder.

"That would probably just get him killed," Max said thoughtfully, holding her chin. "She doesn't take kindly to people who can't take instructions, does she?"

"OK, OK, I get it, I'm never, ever, ever, ever, _ever_, going to be cracking safes or unlocking doors or finding my way around a library. Can we go get some dinner now?" Seth asked fruitlessly.

"What's Nero and HIVEMind got to say on this?" Shelby asked, suddenly having an idea. "We shouldn't be distracted from our studies with the exams this close, should we?"

"No, but this is the stream for future leaders, so lead," Ms Leon gestured to Seth, who threw his arms up and walked away. He immediately bashed into a desk and doubled over, holding his knee and hissing in pain.

"Then again, maybe he could help us in Tech," Max reasoned, thinking about her and Fang's jumbled effort at it last time.

Shelby sat down in her seat, smashed her face into the desk and shrieked.

-.-.-.-

"You two, the Arch-Angel and The Wraith, want me, to help teach _Seth_ stealth," Raven repeated, slowly.

"Yeah," Max said, nodding quickly, like it was a duh thing to say.

"Are you insane," Raven slowly asked, stressing out the _insane._ "Or do you need extra-credit that badly that you're willing to try achieve the impossible?" The two girls had confronted her about their problem in the halls after their late dinner, and it was almost curfew.

"We don't need extra-credit _that _badly… I think I've got enough normal credit for the exams so far, but Ms Leon gave us this task, so I'll remember to tell her you think she's insane," Shelby said, grinning. Raven pulled out her Blackbox and started typing furiously at the touch-screens keyboard.

-/-/-/-

To: Ms Leon

From: Raven

_You really need to stop believing those stories Nero keeps making up. It would be easier to teach Block and Tackle quantum physics._

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Seth Walker

_I'm assuming that's an insult._

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Ms Leon

_Purr_

-/-/-/-

To: Ms Leon

From: Raven

_*texts hivemind*_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Raven

_*texts hivemind*_

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Seth Walker

_*hacks hivemind*_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Raven

_*alerts nero*_

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Seth Walker

_*re-activates hivemind but makes him on my side*_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Raven

_*turns off the power*_

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Seth Walker

_*umm… escapes from hive now that all the security systems are offline too*_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Raven

_You wish. With all the noise you'd make, New Mexicans would be able to track you!_

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Seth Walker

_So you're going to help Max and Shelby teach me?_

-/-/-/-

Raven realised her mistake and looked up from her Blackbox to see Max and Shelby staring at her expectantly.

"You know you stick your tongue out when you do that, right?" Max asked, smiling innocently.

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Raven

_*simply murders you to get this over and done with*_

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Seth Walker

_You're supposed to be teaching me stealth and evasion stuff, not fighting. I'm pretty good at that already!_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Raven

_O_O_

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Seth Walker

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Raven

_How'd you even start this anyway?_

-/-/-/-

To: Raven

From: Seth Walker

_I broke something _:)


	13. Chapter 13

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch13

_Hackboxes make great staging grounds for texting wars and staff get annoyed, _

-.-.-.-

Seth quickly checked the inboxes of all the other staff he knew. Ms Leon had nothing interesting. And half of her sent messages were purrs and meows. Seth supposed that the voice-to-text feature of the Blackboxes weren't so reliable for synthetic voices.

Colonel Francisco didn't have anything interesting. Seth didn't actually know anyone else yet.

He looked around the common room from his lookout on the couch. Raven didn't seem to be as intent on killing him as her texts had suggested, so he must be safe for now. Checking out the rest of her inbox, he found texts from HIVEMind, Nero, Dekker, and Ms Leon. Well, interesting ones anyway.

The ones from Nero mostly detailed his plans/cue cards for his next school speech, to which Raven replied _"You know damn well I suck at speeches. Test them on someone else!"_. Looks like the Hunt was going to be happening soon, as well as exams soon after that. Seth checked HIVEMind's inbox, which lagged his Blackbox to the point where he almost couldn't get out of the messaging program.

"Hey," Otto greeted him as he sat down next to Seth. "Anything interesting on there?" he asked, yawning. It was almost curfew and his day had been pretty tiring.

"Depends. Exams are coming up, right after something called the Hunt. And HIVEMind's inbox is absolutely filled with messages. I almost broke my Blackbox again," Seth chuckled, flicking through Dekker's text messages. "Dekker, our ever-present stalker, has been asking all of us what we've been up to today… you should get your text right about… now!"

Otto's Blackbox beeped, causing him to startle. "That is scary," he laughed, pulling it out. "How'd you know?"

"Shelby just sent her reply a few seconds ago, and I was just guessing really. It might have been me next," Seth admitted. "I think I'll send in my report early," he said, pulling up a text to send to Dekker.

"You're climbing the blacklist," Otto warned, smiling. "But this is going to be fun,"

-/-/-/-

To: Chief Dekker

From: Seth Walker

_Got lost in the Maze. Didn't show up for Tactical Ed. Had pizza for lunch. Crayfish for dinner. Icecream and chocolate for desert. How's your day been?_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Chief Dekker

_Where have you been and what have you been doing?_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Chief Dekker

_What did you do?_

-/-/-/-

To: Chief Dekker

From: Seth Walker

Forwarded (Raven): _I broke something _:)

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Chief Dekker

_You are so dead._

-/-/-/-

To: Chief Dekker

From: Seth Walker

_Orly?_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Chief Dekker

_Ya, rly!_

-/-/-/-

To: Chief Dekker

From: Seth Walker

_*forwards to nero*_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Chief Dekker

_*disables your bloackbox so you cant forward to nero*_

-/-/-/-

To: Chief Dekker

From: Seth Walker

_*escapes now that nobody can track me*_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Chief Dekker

_*finds you, then disables blackbox*_

-/-/-/-

To: Chief Dekker

From: Seth Walker

_*leaves blackbox in my room and walks away*_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Chief Dekker

_*brings you in for breaking the rules*_

-/-/-/-

To: Chief Dekker

From: Seth Walker

_*doesn't get taken in because nobody can find me*_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Chief Dekker

_*checks security camera footage*_

-/-/-/-

To: Chief Dekker

From: Seth Walker

_*hacks hivemind*_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Chief Dekker

_*breaks hivemind*_

-/-/-/-

To: Chief Dekker

From: Seth Walker

_*is forwarding this whole conversation to hivemind, raven, nero, and otto*_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Chief Dekker

_*is deleting this conversation from my blackbox*_

-/-/-/-

To: Chief Dekker

From: Seth Walker

_You have a lot to learn about erasing then. Btw, what's the flashy blue dot mean?_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Chief Dekker

_It means HIVEMind is currently viewing your Blackbox history and texts._

-/-/-/-

To: Chief Dekker

From: Seth Walker

_Looks like I don't have to forward this _:)

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Chief Dekker

_I hate you._

-/-/-/-

To: Chief Dekker

From: Seth Walker

_Tsk, no need to threaten students. _

-/-/-/-

To: Chief Dekker, Seth Walker

From: HIVEMind

_O_O_

-.-.-.-

Otto looked at the new text he'd just been forwarded. It had been sent to Raven, Nero, HIVEMind, and himself. Then he looked back up at Seth, who was laughing his head off.

"Dekker's in trouble now," Seth said, wiping away a tear and holding his ribs. "Oh, god, this hurts," he laughed, "remind me to stop having so much fun,"

Otto read the text, and started chuckling. "Congratulations, you have managed to make a fool of both Raven and the new Chief of Security, all in one day!"

"Oh, did I forward that one too?" Seth asked, leaning over to peak at Otto's Blackbox. He had, indeed, forwarded his one man war with Raven.

"What on earth did you break?" Otto replied, checking through his inbox, deleting the last few messages he'd sent to Laura, trying to properly rekindle their relationship, before realising that Seth could probably check her messages just as easily.

"Oh, you know, a few protocols, a firewall here, a subroutine there," Seth waved a hand, like it was nothing. In reality, it had been a little bit more than that. He'd been working on it ever since he'd woken up from drowning. He'd only perfected it in the last couple of hours.

"Great." Otto sighed. "Did you at least leave the security measures for the island defences online?"  
"Unless they have something to do with the texting, they should be fine," Seth grinned, looking through Nero's inbox again. "Want to try lip-synching Nero at his next speech?"

-.-.-.-

Almost every student at H.I.V.E. was listening to music throughout the night. Almost none of them got any sleep. Raven and Dekker got a lecture from Nero about how to deal with troublesome students, and that didn't go too well…

-.-.-.-

"And above all, you must never, _ever,_ threaten the students' safety." Nero finished, looking down at the two women sitting at separate desks in the Villainous Studies classroom.

"She started it!" Both Raven and Dekker pointed at each other and said it at the same time.

"Did not!" they said in unison.

"Did too!" they both yelled.

"ENOUGH!" Nero shouted, bashing his clenched fist on the head desk in front of him. "You two are professionals. What would it do to your image if anybody saw you two bickering like this?"

Ms Leon silently backed up a little, hiding in the vents that lined the roof.

"I expect better from you. What is it that has you two so riled up? We should expect new students to be troublemakers. After all, this is a school of villainy!"

Raven spoke first. "Seth. He's been hacking around quite a bit, and he keeps breaking the rules,"

"He's an Alpha in his first year here; we can expect some degree of aggressiveness from him." Nero replied, sitting down.

"That's not all," Dekker said, waving a fist, "he's been threatening staff, breaking into sensitive areas, and he's been truant,"

"He almost drowned." Raven retorted, "There's a reason he wasn't there for Professor Pike's class. Oh and then he got lost in the Maze and now Ms Leon wants Shelby Trinity, Maxine Ride, and me to try teach him stealth, which if you ask me is a really bad idea for two reasons. The first is that it's going to be damn impossible as it is, and the second is that he's quite skilled already. Add stealth to his list of skills and he could well be a threat to G.L.O.V.E., given the right conditions,"

"Such as?" Nero raised an eyebrow.

"He holds grudges. What I mean is; he likes to deal with them before they turn into grudges. If anyone from G.L.O.V.E. pisses him off when he's older, he's more than likely to start a one man war against them, and you know it," Raven replied. "Oh and he's probably been through your Blackbox too,"

Nero's eyebrows went up and he retrieved his Blackbox from its hiding place is his suit pocket. "And you know this, how?"

"He sent me a text saying your speeches really need work," Raven hid a smile, not mentioning that she had agreed with Seth on the matter.

"You seem to be in his confidential friends list," Nero muttered, hating the new text system more and more. "What about the other new Alphas, any trouble from them?"  
"Maxine fed me false information about an illegal electronic device that Otto Malpense was supposedly hiding in his swimming trunks." Dekker reported.

Raven snorted. "She was talking about something else, you silly-"

"No more of that, thank you very much," Nero reminded her. "If you read up on Otto's file, you'll know that the device is in his head, not his pants."

"Still false information!" Dekker said through gritted teeth.

"She winked at me," Raven said, just to piss off Dekker. It worked.

"I thought you were the world's deadliest assassin, not worlds friendliest," Dekker retorted, tilting her head up and looking down at Raven.

"I would say it takes one to know one, but then again you're neither of those, so-" Raven stuck her tongue out at Dekker.

There was a small clicking sound coming from Nero's end of the room. Both Raven and Dekker froze, wondering what it was, looking at Nero when they heard a second click. Nero was holding up his Blackbox, trying to get the best angle for his next picture.

Then he a got a text a few seconds later.

-/-/-/-

To: Nero  
From: Seth Walker

_O_O_

_Could you ask Raven what Dekker's chin tastes like?_

-/-/-/-

"My god," Nero said, looking in awe at the text he'd just received. "I…"

"You took a picture, didn't you?" Raven said, ticked off. "What's he got to say for himself this time?"

"He wants me to ask you if you know what Dekker's chin tastes like," Nero said, texting HIVEMind.

-/-/-/-

To: HIVEMind

From: Nero

_Could you please fix security measures! Students seem to be having absolutely no trouble hacking them all!_

-/-/-/-

To: Nero

From: HIVEMind

.

-/-/-/-

To: HIVEMind

From: Nero

_What's that smiley supposed to mean?_

-/-/-/-

To: Nero

From: HIVEMind

_Wow… my hero! _:3

-/-/-/-

To: HIVEMind

From: Nero

_He broke you too, didn't he?_

-/-/-/-

To: Nero

From: HIVEMind

_UNICORNS! BACON! FUZZY EINSTEIN HAIR-DO! _

-/-/-/-

"We… may have a problem…" Nero started uncertainly.

"_May_?" Raven replied sarcastically.

"Depends. HIVEMind shouldn't be screaming "unicorns" and "bacon" at me, should he?" Nero was genuinely confused. "I mean, what's the "fuzzy Einstein hair-do" got to do with it?"

"BACON!" HIVEMind shrieked over the schools comms system.

Raven facedesked. "That's what you get for introducing an A.I. to the Nyan Cat,"

"MS LEON IS FARTING RAINBOWS AGAIN!"


	14. Chapter 14

Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch14

_Make it or break it,_

-.-.-.-

Seth, rather embarrassed at what he'd done to HIVEMind, had started work on repairing the AI immediately. When it turned out he couldn't keep his inbox hacking _and _HIVEMind, he simply restored the restrictions and firewalls from a backup he'd made before messing around in the system.

But not before stealing all their passwords.

-.-.-.-

The next two months at H.I.V.E. seemed to fly by for the new students. Not literally, in Max's case, but they still went by and before they'd even realised it, they were starting to think of this place as home.

"What have we got for today?" Otto asked Laura, yawning. He'd been having a pretty vivid dream involving the two of them together, alone… in the science lab. He couldn't remember all the details but they may have been inventing a giant death-ray. Or was it X-Ray goggles?

"Weekend," Laura muttered, rolling over in her bed. She wanted to sleep in, but Otto insisted on asking pointless questions.

"Want to do anything?"

"Sleep in!" Laura moaned, folding her pillow over her ears.

"Leave her be, Otto," Wing advised, coming out of the bathroom. "Or we'll never hear the end of it."

Otto frowned. "Fine…"

-.-.-.-

"Can I break something?" Seth asked Max, who was still lying in bed.

"No."

"Can I-"

"No." Shelby interrupted, also in bed.

"But I'm bored," Seth moaned, swinging around on one of the seats.

"Then play with HIVEMind," Max suggested, waving her hand in a shooing motion over her shoulder. The girls wanted to sleep in, but Seth insisted on asking pointless questions.

"You know what happened last time I tried that," Seth said sadly. "But I think I might have an idea,"

"Then go somewhere else and do it," Shelby yawned, wishing he'd shut up already. "And turn the light out when you leave."

-.-.-.-

Alphas Common Room

Otto and Wing were attempting to play chess. It was going terribly.

"And… I win again," Otto gloated, taking out the black king with his white knight. "Checkmate!"

Seth clapped slowly. "Congratulations, Otto, you have once again done the impossible," he said in a slow, droning monotone voice.

"Perhaps you could be giving me some tips on how to beat you," Wing suggested, a little frustrated at losing for the fifteenth time.

"Not a chance," Otto replied, grinning. "Want to play connect four instead?"

"No."

"Maybe if you didn't rely on the pawns for everything, you'd have a chance." Seth shrugged. "So what do we do now?"

Just like last time the students had a weekend off, they had almost no idea how to spend it. Seth had already tried playing chess against both Otto and Wing, but he got sick of it. Chess wasn't action-y enough for him. And considering he was at H.I.V.E., there were plenty more exciting things he could be doing, despite the rather strict leash Dr Nero had put him on after the H.I.V. problem. He wasn't sure if H.I.V.E. had any computer games available, but he'd rather have a go in the firing range than play connect four.

"I do not know," Wing shook his head. "What's the time?"

Seth checked his Blackbox. "About 11 am," he reported. "An hour and a half before lunch."

Otto would have used the time for study, if he'd needed to, but he didn't dare suggest this to his friends. He could tell that the stress was getting to them, and they needed this time off.

"Hmm…" Otto sat, thinking. None of the boys had any ideas.

"Can I break something?" Seth asked suddenly inspired.

"No!" the other two shouted at him. Seth had gotten a rather bad reputation for breaking things. He was up to his twelfth Blackbox by now.

"Can I make something instead?" he asked, disappointed.

"Make something?" Otto replied, extremely confused. "What are you planning to _make_?"

"Something spectacular," Seth leaned back on the couch and grinned, a plan starting to form in his head. "Does Professor Pike store digital copies of blueprints for things?"

Otto facepalmed. "To get those you would have to break through HIVEMind's main firewall again."

"Not really." Seth said, scrolling through the data-bank on Pike's Blackbox. "Experimental Death Ray, Translator Collar, ah, here we go," he said, muttering the names of the different inventions that Professor Pike had blueprinted. "Variable Geometric Force Field Katana,"

Otto stared at him, dumbstruck. "You have got to be kidding me," he said, incredulous.

"So _that's _why putting the battery in backwards didn't work!" Seth exclaimed, seeing the way the circuitry was set up. He immediately got up and walked back to his cell, setting his plan in motion.

"Should we tell Dekker?" Wing asked, confused. Otto shook his head wearily.

"We should probably tell Professor Pike instead," he said, smiling. "So, how about that game of connect four?"

-.-.-.-

Seth quickly re-invaded the bunk room, quietly opening the door using the newly installed palm scanners. The three-people rooms were rather new, and Tech had had a mysterious palm scanner shortage.

It opened, and he shifted inside as the door shut behind him. The two girls were still sleeping; exhausted from all the studying they'd been doing as well as tutoring him in stealth. It would be a good test of his skills to see if he could get past them without waking them up.

Max was snoring slightly, and rolled over often, providing him with background white noise for Shelby, who was a very peaceful but rather light sleeper. Shelby was silent, her breathing deep and even. She was awake, but she wasn't going to let anyone know. Seth had woken her when he opened the door.

Seth, oblivious to the fact that one of his tutors was awake, removed his shoes as quietly as possible, undoing the laces slowly to stop the ends flicking against anything. His socks would help to deafen any noise his footsteps might make, but he trod carefully and slowly as he passed by the sleeping girls.

But, as careful as he was, Shelby could track him through listening. Granted, it was hard, but she could, just barely, guess where he was at the foot of her bed, far side from the door. She quickly peeked out from under her heavy eyelids, opening them only a fraction, and saw Seth's face millimetres from her own. She quickly jerked back and her eyes shot open.

Seth grinned, bowed with open arms, and stepped quietly towards the computers, not saying anything.

Shelby's heart was racing. How the hell did he get that close without her noticing?! She guessed that her teaching was a little _too _good. Hiding under the covers, she tried to calm herself and get back to sleep, but the adrenaline was making it rather hard.

"Surprise," Seth whispered quietly from the computer desk. Shelby stuck a hand out and pulled the finger at him. "You're no fun," Seth said under his breath, smirking as Shelby's finger disappeared beneath the covers.

Time to get to work. Seth disabled the CPU fan and stuck it to external heatsink mode, which meant he could operate the computer in near silence, the only sound being his fingers dancing over the keyboard. He contacted Professor Pike, hooking up his Blackbox to the computer so he could focus on one screen and start drawing out the blueprints for his new idea.

-/-/-/-

To: Professor Pike

From: Seth Walker

_I'm going to need a lab and some special deliveries_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Professor Pike

_Now you can't just go around demanding this sort of stuff, you know._

-/-/-/-

Seth finished off the first rough drawings of his idea, and clipped it to his next text.

-/-/-/-

To: Professor Pike

From: Seth Walker

Attachment: Board MK-I

_You know me _:)

-/-/-/-

Professor Pike indeed knew Seth's technological capabilities. Seth had excelled in his Tech classes, often finishing so fast that he had time to tutor Max and Shelby, which usually consisted of him doing it for them and explaining how each part worked. It was going to take a while, but he might eventually get them to build a doomsday device.

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Professor Pike

_I can see faults in this design already, but it is an interesting concept. What sort of special deliveries were you after?_

-/-/-/-

To: Professor Pike

From: Seth Walker

Attachment: Board MK-II

_That _is_ the concept. Gimmie a moment to refine it and you'll see what I mean. As for special deliveries… have you got any spare geometric katana things?_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Professor Pike

_This design is a little bit better. Go ahead with your new project in Lab 7_

-/-/-/-

To: Professor Pike

From: Seth Walker

Attachment: Sunglasses MK-1

_Outline of uses and goal, circuitry to come later_

-/-/-/-

To: Seth Walker

From: Professor Pike

B)

_Stylish _and_ effective! Nero would be proud_

-/-/-/-

That alone made Seth smile. Not only was his idea considered cutting edge, but he was actually going to get a chance to build it… he started working on the finer details of the design, going into that state where the rest of the world seem to cease to matter anymore.

-.-.-.-

Max yawned, rolled over, and snuggled down under the covers of her bunk, trying to go back to sleep. It was no use, she was awake now. Yawning again, she sat up and looked around her small room groggily. Seth was quietly messing around on the computer, occasionally looking up at the roof or some other place while thinking before immediately returning to his project with flourish. Shelby was still half asleep, muttering and fidgeting. She must have been having a nightmare. The sheets were tangled around Shelby's kicking legs, and she'd somehow managed to trap her arms behind her back.

"Shelby? You OK?" Max asked tentatively, reaching out to her friend.

Shelby moaned and wriggled about even more, like she was trying to get out of someone's grip. Max got out of her bed and crouched next to Shelby, shaking her shoulders. "Wake up!" Max hissed. She checked the time. 4:30 pm. They'd missed breakfast, lunch, and soon maybe even dinner.  
Shelby woke with a start, jolted awake by Max. She was sweating, hyperventilating, and could barely think straight. "Who- What?" she flung herself away from Max's grip, trying to roll over, but was trapped by the covers.

"Hey, hey, calm down," Max put a reassuring hand on Shelby's shoulder. Shelby stopped hyperventilating and eventually managed to untangle herself from the bed.

"I'm sorry, I thought I'd been caught," Shelby trembled. "Like I was in the middle of nabbing the jewels… and the police were there waiting for me,"

Max nodded. "Don't worry, Seth would make sure the system forgets about you, and then I'd drive a tank through the wall and break you out of prison!" she said enthusiastically. "What good are friends if they can't break you out of prison every now and then?"

Shelby laughed, shook her head and got up. "I don't know, but I need a shower," she said, smiling.

As Shelby disappeared into the bathroom, Max sat down on her bed and yawned again before flicking her hair back and trying to tie it up into a ponytail like Wing's. It didn't work very well so she gave up and checked on Seth, who didn't even seem to have noticed Shelby's nightmares.

"Hey," Max said, propping her elbow on the back of his wheelie chair. On the screen were some very complex and intricate blueprints.

"Hey," Seth responded automatically, not really knowing who was behind him he was that distracted. He flicked and clicked the mouse, moving extremely fast and accurately, adding new features to his design.

"Watcha doing?" Max asked, staring at the intricate circuitry that filled the screen.

"Anti-Grav Hover Board. See the force fields produced by the katana? They push inwards, so the higher the power input, the slimmer the blade's forced to be. It's still as dense and as heavy as it was originally, just much much sharper. The trick is to replicate that on a one way siding. If I invert one half of the field, it will not only point that pushing force the other way, but it'll amplify the other field's force tenfold. If I set it up like this, and have it push against nothing, it'll work. When the board is put closer to something, the pushing force of the Variable Geometric Force Field is directed there, and the board will push it away. If the object is something like the ground, then the board will be pushing itself up, instead of the world down. One of the things I like about it is that the closer you get to the output's base, the stronger the push. I've calculated that you can shoot a high calibre sniper round at it, and it will be deflected. As the bullet gets really close to the force field, the pushing output is increased exponentially. Nothing can get closer than a centimetre before it gets pushed away. But that's only going to work for small things. If I put it on the ground upside down and run it over with a tank, the board will still be trying to push the tank away, and will actually compress itself against the ground until such a time as its impaled in the ground far enough that its pushing force cannot get it any further away from the tank, or its crushed its electronics. All I need to do is install a program for power regulation over rough terrain to ensure a smooth ride, and then if all goes well for testing; it's done and ready for general H.I.V.E. use."

Max whistled appreciatively. "That's quite an explanation,"

"You wanna hear about the Armoured Combat Unit?" Seth asked, bringing up a new blueprint in progress. It looked like a giant colossal humanoid robot, with a cross section showing a small wireframe exoskeleton suit for the pilot.

"Maybe some other time," Max shook her head, grabbing her uniform from the closet. The things her brother could come up with were truly mind boggling sometimes, she thought as she changed into the uniform, checking herself in the mirror. "Are you going to be designing the USS Enterprise anytime soon?"

"I'll just finish off the Light-Sabres first." Seth answered. "The ACU is going to employ the Anti-Grav Plates for the main cannon; which, if I get it right, should be capable of shooting ordinance like you'd find on a navy vessel. Believe me when I tell you that's the big guns. This thing could punch a hole through a line of tanks, if the rounds weren't designed to explode. And considering the semi-magnetic nature of the deployment system, I think I just designed the first viable Gauss Cannon,"

Max sighed and shook her head. "I thought I said "maybe some other time"?"

"Yeah but at least now you'll know what hits you," Seth grinned evilly.


End file.
